Boost credit score in two weeks

Question: How can I boost credit score in two weeks?

Two week is tough, but there are two things you can do to raise your score very quickly.

1. If you have any credit cards with balances more than 30% of the credit limit, pay them down. 35% of your FICO score is based on credit utilization. The creditors may not report immediately to the bureaus, so you may have speed things up a little to meet your two-week deadline. Any mortgage loan officer should be able to perform a “rapid rescore” or “credit bureau update” for you. You would provide documentation to show the new balances (screen shots will generally work), and they’ll submit that information directly tot the credit bureaus. There is a small charge for this; expect to pay in the neighborhood of $25 per bureau, per account, plus the cost of a new credit report.

2. If you have any collections or judgments on your credit report, get them cleared up and documented. Then you can do the aforementioned rapid rescore. A word of caution: if the collection accounts or judgments are more than two years old, there is the possibility that settling them could lower your score by changing its status from “collection account” to “paid collection.” Both are negatives, but the older a negative is, the less effect on your score. If a collection account is, say, four years old, it has very little effect on your score. A recent “paid collection” could cost your 20 points or more.



There are other things you can do, such as disputing those items that may be incorrectly reporting. If the creditor doesn’t confirm the item within 30 days, it has to come off your report. This is how credit repair “clinics” operate. Doing this can improve your score—sometimes a lot—but it typically takes more than two weeks. One exception would be a department store who reported a 30-day late payment but was willing to change that because you’re a good customer, and it was just an oversight on your part. With a letter from the store’s credit department that your account has always been paid as agreed, you’ll be able to do the rapid rescore. Going through that process typically takes a week or so.

Hope this helps. Good luck!