3 Surprising Ways You Are Hurting Your Credit Scores without Knowing

There are certain financial behaviors or decisions you make which might be hurting your credit score without your knowledge. Sooner or later, your score may be so low that you will start considering bad credit financing to meet your obligation. However, this can be avoided if you are aware of the things putting a dent on that report. Here are some of the things you must stop to prevent further hurt on your score:

Working with lenders who do not report credit activities

For you strengthen your credit history, it is imperative that creditors report all the positive activities pertaining to your credit to the bureaus. Some creditors submit updates to the bureaus on a daily, weekly or monthly basis while some never report a thing. If you are working with a creditor who is not keen on reporting on the updates, your score may never improve even if you make all payments at the right time. Be careful, therefore, with the creditors you work with and ascertain that they are reporting your credit activities to the bureaus.

Requesting for your credit limit to be increased

Requesting for your limit to be increased can impact your credit score in various ways. For it to lower your credit score, it has to initiate a hard inquiry as the one explained above. For you to be certain that such a request won’t impact your score negatively, ask the issuer when making the request if it will initiate a hard or a soft inquiry.

Closing an old credit card account

It might sound like a great idea to close your old credit card account, but it has the potential to decrease the length of your credit history while increasing your credit utilization rate and these will lower your credit score. It is advisable not to close your old credit card accounts, because a long credit history will always be beneficial.