If you’re ready to tackle your goals for building credit this year, come dive in with us as we take a look at a few great strategies.

Open a Secured Credit Card

To open a secured credit card, you must make a cash deposit upfront. Doing so mitigates the financial risk that lenders have to take. In many cases, the deposit that you have to make is the same amount as your credit limit. In essence, if you put in $2,000, your spending limit will most likely be $2,000.

The good thing about secured credit cards is that they have low credit limits. These are perfect if you’re just getting started in the world of credit.

A Few Master Moves For Building Credit

Open a Joint Line of Credit

A really helpful step in your journey to build credit is opening a joint line of credit. You may find someone who you trust to help manage your finances. With a joint line of credit, you can secure yourself an opportunity to build credit along with the joint account holder.

There are a couple of downsides to opening joint credit lines. Not all lenders make them available, and in many cases, if you’re able to open one, you might not be able to remove the joint account holder if that is something you want to do.

Set Up Automatic Bill Payments

One of the most important things to do when opening a line of credit is making sure you make on-time payments. Doing so is the only way that you’ll be able to build a positive credit history. One of the best ways to make sure that your payments are always on time is by setting up automatic bill payments through your lender.

By having an automatic payment system in place, you’ll never have to stress about missing payments, which could harm your credit score.

However, even if you have automatic payments, it’s a really good idea to make sure you look at your bills every month so you can keep an eye on your spending. In doing so, you’ll also be able to look at potential fraud.

Pay Off Existing Debt

If you have any lingering debt, you can lower your credit utilization ratio by paying it off. However, we know that paying off debt is not always the easiest thing in the world. With that said, it could bring you closer to the credit score that you are looking for.

Become an Authorized User

If you want to become an authorized user, you might start by asking a family member or trusted friend. By becoming an authorized user, your accounts will reflect the payment history and credit limit of the account you’ve become an authorized user on.

If you don’t have anybody that you can ask to become an authorized user on one of their accounts, you can get in touch with a tradeline supplier like Personal Tradelines. We look forward to helping you take your next steps.