One way to take charge of your credit is to understand and put into practice actions that boost your credit score, and avoid the things that diminish it. As a reminder, the #1 thing you can do long term to improve your credit score is to pay your creditors on time, every time. The #2 factor affecting your score is how much you owe in comparison to how much credit is available to you. For this reason, if you need a quick boost to your credit score, one thing you can to is to pay off, or pay down credit accounts. If your credit card has a balance of half, or more, of your credit limit, paying it down to a smaller percentage of available credit will give you a credit bump. Better yet, pay those cards off every month and avoid the high interest charges.

There are no quick fixes to improving a credit score, but unfortunately, there are negative credit experiences that can gash your score in a hurry. See the chart below:

  

As you can see, it doesn't take a major event to cause a major drop in your credit score. On late payment can cause your credit score to drop 100 points if you are coming from the position of having excellent credit. As one might suspect, foreclosures and bankruptcies are the most detrimental. The other thing to notice here is that the higher the credit, the bigger the fall when a negative event takes place.

Buying a home has lots of twists and turns, detours and bumps in the road, but at CRHDC, we are committed to helping you navigate and smooth out that Path to Homeownership. Give us a call at 303-428-1448 or email Ernie at ernie@crhdc.org and let us know how we can help.