How else can I improve my credit?

Unfortunately, credit scores do not go up overnight. It takes time - usually several months or a year - to see any significant improvement in your score.

Have you gone to your bank to see what your exact situation is in regards to being pre-approved for a mortgage? They would definitely be able to point you in the right direction as to how to improve your score as well.

Paying your bills on time is definitely a must to improve your score. A credit card would help, but don't get in over your head right from the get-go by getting a high interest rate credit card - if anything happens (loss of job, etc), you may end up falling behind on the bills and will be right back where you started, or worse.

Yes the best you can do it pay ur bills on time and pay them down. Usually you can see an improvement in your score in as little as 60 days if your reducing your debt under 50% and have no late payments. How much of a loan are you trying to get to purchase a house?

Here is what I did. I opened an Orchard Secured card and a Crown Jewelers Preferred Card. Score jumped from 540 to 620 in a year....pretty soon will be ready for fair credit cards and better cards....takes time though

The good thing about the Crown Jewelers Preferred Card is you can ONLY use it to buy their jewelry, so it is basically a forced credit account that you only use about $50.00 of cause you just buy something small.

Secured card I view as a forced savings account, which happens to report to the credit bureaus.

I agree, pay everything on time ALWAYS, no matter what.

i was thinking about doing the crown jewelers card, my question is is the jewelry good quality and worth the money? i've never bought jewelry online and would hate to get stuck paying money on a cracker jack ring or somthing like that. the deal sounds good as far as having the open line of credit to help improve my credit but at the same time i dont want my wifes finger to turn green. sorry if this is a stupid question but i really want to know before i agree to it. thanks

I bought my wife a silver cross and chain for like $35 + shipping. It looks pretty and didn't turn her neck green. $50 bucks at the time was worth it for the boost in score I recieved. Fortunately for me, CJ is in Arlington TX about 5 miles from where I work so I can go inperson next time. No shipping charge that way.

thanks ND, looking online the prices really arent bad, but i havent come across any complaints against them so i guess thats a good sign.

Once you get your scores up past the 600 range, gp fpr the Sterling Trifecta (Kays, JB Robinson, Jareds ) Sterling jewelers has like 10 different jewelry store chains across the US. I have 3 accounts with $3000 CL showing on each. It is actually a shared $3000 CL but it appears as $9000 on my CR's.

I bought the larger gold starfish for my mother-in-law, she absolutely loves it and it looks quite nice. When time clicks on a bit and coming to a time that I need to buy something else to keep the account going, I am going to buy my daughter the small one, she wants to be a marine biologist so it is a good fit and helps me at the same time.

Nascar do you have a website to apply for the Sterling Trifecta? And do they report to all 3 credit bureaus?

I understand there are two aspects for getting future loans. One that is your assessed ethics side. And second being the assets you own on whose basis the banks rely on recovery of payments. The first part you must build with your committments that banks look into you and are like first impression. The second is something you can do about it. Above tricks will surely be helpful. Besides, there are policies or fixed deposits etc. to be shown as mortgage options to the banks. Moreover, you can have time to find out a stronger co-applicant profile to put on demand.

i went ahead and opend an account with crown, we are trying to buy a house and we have been working on our credit for about 2 years now, had it pulled about 2 weeks ago and the guy said i need about 25 to 30 more points and we should be good. we are getting ready to sign another 6 month lease on our apartment so hopfully it will give us enough time.