To show the impact of each of these mistakes on your ability to get a credit card, we've assigned ea

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To show the impact of each of these mistakes on your ability to get a credit card, we've assigned each of them a certain number of Whammies. Each mistake is rated on a scale of 1 to 4. The more Whammies, the harder your credit will be hit.
As with any loan, applying for a credit card involves preparation, especially if your credit history is less than sparkling. But a few activities -- some of them not obvious -- can hurt your chances of getting approved for that new plastic.
If you're looking cheap airline tickets to cancun mexico for a card, the best thing you can do to increase cheap airline tickets to cancun mexico your chances is to pull your credit report, review it for accuracy and analyze the data to make sure you're in the best possible financial standing.
They cannot, since credit card companies don't reveal this information, said Ray Williams, president of Greenway Capital Management in Fort Worth, Texas. Therefore, it's best for consumers to understand how to determine if they are a good candidate by only applying if they have credit scores above 650 for most credit card companies. Some will allow 620 but with higher interest rates.
You don't want to go out and apply for a bunch of different accounts before cheap airline tickets to cancun mexico applying for a line of credit, said Bruce McClary, representative for ClearPoint Credit Counseling Solutions and a former loan officer. cheap airline tickets to cancun mexico It may send a couple of messages. First, it tells the lender that you went to a bunch of places and got denied for some reason. Or the possibility exists that you opened an account in each of those places.
A small amount of deal shopping is no big problem . Scoring models understand that those looking for a credit card -- like those looking for a mortgage or an auto loan -- will often consider several different lenders within a certain window of time. So, how many is too many? More than a couple of inquiries would be enough to raise a yellow flag, said McClary. At five or six, you start getting into red-flag territory. Confine cheap airline tickets to cancun mexico your shopping to a brief period -- say, a month. The credit scoring algorithms view that as routine comparison shopping and don't ding you as much for it.
Why it hurts you: Your credit utilization ratio accounts for 30 percent of your credit score. cheap airline tickets to cancun mexico If you're hovering cheap airline tickets to cancun mexico near the max on your accounts, you're considered a high risk to credit card companies.
For any existing credit cards you have, you want to minimize percentage cheap airline tickets to cancun mexico utilization and maximize credit available, said Kevin Gallegos, vice president of Freedom Debt Relief in Tempe, Ariz.. If you have a credit card with a limit of $10,000, and you owe $3,500 on it, that's a 35 percent utilization. The less you use, the better. Those with the best credit scores on average use about Anything over 35 percent is considered high and can impact credit scores, and thereby decrease cheap airline tickets to cancun mexico your chances of getting another card. Over 50 percent will have a definite negative impact on a credit score, and a maxed-out card will very negatively impact the situation.
Patrick Nichols, a database analyst cheap airline tickets to cancun mexico from Boston, learned cheap airline tickets to cancun mexico this lesson the hard way when he missed a payment deadline by just two hours. I went from paying [an interest rate of] 0 percent to 30 percent overnight, he said.
Nichols started shopping around for other cards to transfer his balance and came up short on offers. Not only did he have the late payment on his record, he also had a high balance and was starting to rack up multiple inquiries. He found he was limited only to cards with higher interest rates.
Why it hurts you: If there are too many subprime lenders represented in your credit mix, (which accounts for 10 percent of your score), it could cause credit card companies to think twice about giving you a card.
Lenders look at what types of creditors you are doing business with, and some of them take issue with applicants who come in with a portfolio of subprime lenders, said McClary. It can affect prime borrowers cheap airline tickets to cancun mexico without them even knowing -- a lot of these retail finance type situations are backed by subprime lenders.
cheap airline tickets to cancun mexico McClary said that when people apply for a store credit card in order to take advantage of special financing offers or discounts -- such as in furniture stores, for example -- they need to pay careful attention to the financial institution that is offering the card.
Banks tend to be prime lenders but aren't always. Finance companies tend to be subprime lenders but aren't always. To tell the difference, you'll have to do a little digging. For a public company, go to the investor relations section on its website and look at how they describe themselves. For a private firm, it'll take a little more effort but you should be able to get a read on them by Googling the name of the company.
How much does this affect your credit? It's all about proportion, cheap airline tickets to cancun mexico McClary said. If 90 percent of your creditors are prime creditors and you have this one subprime account, it's going to be like a pebble in an ocean. On the other hand, if you've cheap airline tickets to cancun mexico got a bunch of these store accounts, and they account for 50 or 60 percent of your [loans], that could potentially be a problem.
Why it hurts you: Canceling accounts in good standing with other companies can appear to shorten your length of credit history on your report (15 percent of your score) and can also reduce your available credit, which could drive up your debt utilization ratio.
If you shut down a bunch of accounts at the same time, that starts cutting away at another piece of the pie for your credit cheap airline tickets to cancun mexico score, which is the length of your credit history, cheap airline tickets to cancun mexico said McClary. cheap airline tickets to cancun mexico Plus, your debt ratio worsens cheap airline tickets to cancun mexico when you shut down inactive accounts. Just leave them inactive.
During the recession, banks got in the habit of closing inactive cards. It might be a good idea to make a small purchase -- a pack of gum or a magazine, perhaps -- on the card in question and then pay it off. That little activity could be enough to keep them from shutting your account down and damaging your credit without cheap airline tickets to cancun mexico you knowing about it.
The problem can be a simple as having a too-common name or a name that frequently gets misspelled. OK, so there's not a lot you can do if your name is John Smith. Still, you should be aware that your common name can make you more prone to mistaken identity when it comes to your credit report, which in turn could make it more difficult for you to secure cheap airline tickets to cancun mexico a card. According to a February 2013 reort by the Federal Trade Commission, one-fifth cheap airline tickets to cancun mexico of Americans have mistakes in their credit reports big enough to affect their credit scores. The good news is that credit report errors can be fixed -- though cheap airline tickets to cancun mexico it requires diligence and often more than a simple call or Web visit to the three major consumer cheap airline tickets to cancun mexico credit bureaus: Experian , Equifax and TransUnion .
Don't try to protect things by not borrowing anything, said Gallegos. Credit card issuers and credit reporting agencies rely on past payment history to gauge how borrowers will do in the future. If you don't borrow, they have no information to rely on. For those without any credit cards, a student loan or car loan helps build a credit history, as does paying every single bill on time and in full. That includes rent, phone, Internet and utility bills.
Co-signing means you're telling the bank that if he or she doesn't pay it, I will, said Sanford. The problem is that if the person starts missing payments, the [lender] is not going to contact the co-signer until they're 90 days late. You could have a 750 credit score, and the next thing you know you're cheap airline tickets to cancun mexico at 590.
Your employment history won't have an impact on your credit cheap airline tickets to cancun mexico card application, since most applications are processed electronically using calculations based on your credit score alone. However, on loans where a human scans your employment record to verify your income, more than two or three changes within a year or two might send up a red flag, said Gallegos. Very frequent job changes could -- to some issuers -- bring up questions of an applicant's income stability, which ultimately affects cheap airline tickets to cancun mexico their ability to pay.
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