Often the easiest thing to do, she said, is to pay off the balance completely. "Your score will start to rise again once that record is closed," she said.
If you believe the collection agency is acting inappropriately, file a public complaint through the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. For the debt collectors, she said, it's often easier to just resolve the issue "rather than have their regulator look into the situation."Ten percent of your score is about the variety of your debt, said Matt Schulz, credit expert at CompareCards.com.
"If you've had a car loan, a personal loan, a credit card and a mortgage and handled them all well, you're probably going to have a higher score than someone who has just had a credit card — all other things being equal," Schulz said.You shouldn't go out and get a loan you don't want or need just to bump your score a bit, he said, but, "it is worth considering in some circumstances."After you've paid off a credit card, you might close the line of credit.
Keep in mind that doing so will lower your overall credit limit, and therefore may increase your utilization rate — how much credit you're using versus what's available to you. "There is some data from FICO that reveals people with credit scores above 800 commonly maintain a credit ratio below 10%," said Bruce McClary, vice president of communications at the National Foundation of Credit Counseling.
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