Motley Fool: Five Ways To Ruin Your Credit

Motley Fool gives tips on what NOT to do to maintain good credit:   Improving your credit score takes some elbow grease. Ruining it, on the other hand, is a piece of cake.  Just a few false moves, and in no time, your credit reputation starts to suffer. It doesn’t even need to be something extreme, either. Just a late bill payment here or a retail splurge there is all it takes. Woe to the consumers who make a few missteps in a row and find themselves slogging through suboptimal loans (high rates, high fees) the next time they’re shopping for credit.

The surest way to be blacklisted is to break the rules that matter most to the very folks measuring your creditworthiness. Here are the five key gotchas and some ways to stay in the lending world’s good graces.

1. Forget to put the check in the mail. Hey, it happens — you’re on the lido deck during your family getaway, and — doh! — you remember that the credit card payment was due three days ago. No big whoop, right?

Actually, you are right … to a point. Credit card companies actually do have a heart (or at least offer a little leeway), and they’re willing to let a few missteps slide, particularly in how they treat 30- and 60-day late payments that are brought up to date right away.

Still, if you make a habit of it, prepare for some brutal consequences, since one-third of your credit score — the most popular being the FICO score from Fair Isaac — is based on your bill-paying habits. According to Credit.com, a single 90-day-late payment is as damaging as a bankruptcy filing, a tax lien, a collection, a judgment, or a repossession.

The lesson here is simple: Pay your bills on time. Don’t skip any bills — and certainly not your rent or your mortgage payment. Send in just the minimum amount due, if you have to, but send it in. If you know your payment will be late, call your lender and explain, and he or she might give you a free pass, just this once.

2. Spend up to your credit limit. You’ve earned it, right? After all, a bunch of bankers in suits have deemed you worthy of a spending limit of $5,000, $10,000, $20,000, or maybe even $40,000 or more on your credit cards. Financing a Bugatti has never seemed so within reach.

Back to earth, Trump wannabe. Sure, you might have a $15,000 credit limit on your card, but that doesn’t mean that’s how much you can afford to spend. Even a temporary splurge could turn into long-term debt trouble if you’re not careful. Just ask Michael Jackson.

Keep those cards in your pockets and avoid coming anywhere near maxing out your credit cards. The measure of debt to your credit limits counts for a whopping 30% of your overall credit score. Our advice is to keep your debt to below 10% of your limit — and you are paying the bill off every month, right? If you can’t handle that, keep in mind that around 30% is “acceptable” to the banking world, and that red flags start waving when your debt-to-available-credit ratio exceeds 50%.

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