In the world of credit scores, 850 is the lucky number and the perfect score. This is clearly not a result of accidents. This is not just achieved by making timely payments of bills. This requires strong determination and dedication to increase a credit score, the knowledge on how to increase it and the time. Here is a personal experience of a 23 year old associate who was able to obtain this excellent score.

Joshua Duvachelle, an associate editor of a nonprofit organization takes pride of his 736 credit score. At this very young age, he attributes this achievement to the way his parents raised him. That is, to be a person who practices strong work ethics and someone who knows how to save beginning at an early age. He shares having seen the way his parents enjoyed abundance and suffered scarcity. This led him to build a strong foundation for his financial future.

He took his knowledge of building good credit from working on full-time credit projects. He also studies financial magazines. At age 18, he opened his own credit card. Currently, he checks his scores monthly by subscribing to any of the three credit bureaus. Annually, he also obtains a free report from these three reporting agencies. Experian, Trans Union, and Equifax are the main reporting entities.

Mr. Duvachelle boasts of having a perfect history of payments. Through all these time, he experienced having an incorrectly sent account but he gave time to dispute it for many months until it was fixed. Even his student loan that amounted to $15,000 was all paid down until the last few amounts of the loan. This unpaid amount was purposely done to maintain an installment form of debt which credit bureaus consider in giving a high score. Aside from this, Duvachelle spends only about 30 to 40% of the total limit in his credit cards. He knows that this is the maximum amount he can consume to maintain his credit rating.

Expenditures that will exceed 40% of the credit limit will cause a decline in the credit score.
From this personal experience, it is easy to point out the factors that contribute to a good credit standing. This include proper financial management, constant checking of one’s credit reports, disputing errors, making timely payments, creating a perfect payment history, paying down debts, maintaining different types of loans and limiting credit card usage to a maximum of 40%.

More Credit Score Resources:

www.myfico.com/crediteducation/creditscores.aspx

www.nytimes.com/…/credit-scores/primerscores.html