Your credit score can cause you a lot of frustration if it is too low. Your credit score has the ability to keep your from refinancing your home and even prevent your from purchasing a home. If you need to increase your credit score, you'll need to take into account a major secret involving your credit.

First of all, the general rule of thumb is not having more than 50% of your available credit used. For example, if you have 5 credit cards and each one has a credit limit of $1,000, you should not have a balance of more than $500 on each one of them. If you do, your credit score could be lowered. Most lenders prefer you to have less than 25% of your credit used, meaning you would not want more than $250 for a balance on any of them. If you have balances totally more than 50% of your available credit, there is a way to fix it.

First of all, you can do this in one or two ways. The first way involves paying down your debt. This simply means paying down the balance to equal less than 50% of the available credit limit. This can take time and if you want to do this quickly, you might want to take the next advice.

If you have paid your bills on time, you might want to consider increasing your credit limits with your creditors. For example, if your credit limit is $1,000 and you have a balance of $500, try increasing your credit limit to $2,000. This will bring your balance to 25% of your limit.

The only problem with this, it will allow you to spend more on your card. You should only use this method if you have good control of your spending. If you think that you'll use your credit card once you raise that limit, you should not use this method as you could end up with a lower score than you had before. Also, remember, the higher amount you owe, the higher the minimum payments will be.