How Can a Young Person Build Credit?

What better way to spend Labor Day by pushing off the labor on someone else? Just kidding, but the following is a guest post by James. I’m particularly interested in this topic, because I want to help my kids build fantastic credit before they even head off to college. Fortunately, I’ve got a lot of years before that happens (but I know they’ll go by quickly).

If you are young then you may have come across the problem of not being able to obtain credit because you have never had credit in the past. It can be really difficult to take that first step to getting a loan, or obtaining a credit card.

It’s easy to start giving up hope of ever obtaining the credit you need just to try and buy the larger essentials in life, such as furniture and kitchen appliances. You shouldn’t give up though; there are ways to improve your credit score. Some of them take a while to accomplish, and require patience. Some like Credit Tradelines provide a faster solution.

Things to remember when you’re trying to improve your credit

When you’re young you’re building your credit score from scratch. A major factor that contributes to your credit score is your payment history, and you won’t have one. This doesn’t mean that you are necessarily a bad risk for credit, just that there is no record of your reliability. One thing you often need when you’re trying to build a credit score is a lot of patience; it doesn’t happen overnight. Here are a few things to remember.

• When you first apply for credit you shouldn’t make too many applications at once as this doesn’t reflect well on your credit score.
• You should never apply for more credit than you know you can repay as doing this can lead to problems keeping up with your payments.
• You should make sure that you keep a record of when your payments are due so that you don’t risk missing them.

Gradually building the credit you have, and making sure you pay on time, helps to build your credit score and improve your likelihood of obtaining new credit in the future.

A quicker way to improve your credit score

If you need credit urgently then spending time building your credit score may not seem as though it’s going to work for you. If this is the case, you may want to consider buying a seasoned tradeline. These tradelines are lines of credit that have a high credit amount with regular repayments and a low balance. Buying one means that you become an authorized user and the line of credit can be used when calculating your credit score, to improve it.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t still improve your credit score by gradually obtaining credit, and repaying it reliably. It just means that you have another option that enables you to make the process go faster. Seasoned tradelines are an excellent resource for people who have not built any credit as they provide an immediate base on which to build. You don’t have to spend an excessive amount of time trying to get the credit that you need. Whichever option you decide on, there are ways that you can improve your credit score no matter what age you are.