Page 22 - increase your credit score

In my situation, the main factor contributing to my low scores was utilization. I had to
figure out how to bring that utilization down.

To do that, I needed to make a budget. You may not consider a budget as part of your

strategy to increase your credit score. I’m here to tell you a budget is the single most
important step in achieving high credit scores.

Budgets Make You Confront Your Fear

Earlier I mentioned that fear can hold you back from building a good credit score. If you

are certain you want to have good credit scores, you need to overcome your anxiety about
your finances.

The best way to do that is to analyze your spending, find out where you’re going crazy

and create a sensible budget that allots enough money to live comfortably but not
extravagantly.

I was very afraid of looking at our finances – while I knew we were in debt, I didn’t know

how much debt we were in.

Budgets Make You See Your Finances With Clarity

In order to overcome my fear, I needed to see exactly how deep we were in debt. So, I
listed all of our credit cards, logged into every account and found out how much we owed,

how much we were paying each month and what our APRs were.

The results were ugly – we were $22,000 in debt.

But did you know that I felt empowered the moment I knew exactly what was happening
to our finances?

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