i did a credit karma video a few months ago and i asked you to comment below if you're
interested in learning about how i maintain an 800 score and the comments went absolutely not today
we're going to talk about it right now and we're going to talk about how exactly i got
that 800 credit score and how you can do the same thing thanks to credit karma i'm gonna walk you
through exactly how credit karma works it's absolutely free to use i've never paid a dime
for the thing and i've had it for like how many months now haven't even paid a dime i haven't
been scammed haven't gotten annoying emails hey before we get started i want to welcome back my
sweet lifers that's the community where we are smart about how we handle our money so we can live
our ultimate suite life so become a sweet life for yourself subscribe today and by the way guys
i want to talk about an important thing and that is the question of the day why do you think credit
scores are important comment down below drop me a line and let me know why you think a credit
score is really that important or do you think a credit score isn't really important are you kind
of in the dave ramsey field of saying credit scores are an i love debt score and the more
your credit score goes up the more you're in debt guess what i'm debt free my credit score is 800.
but who cares i'll get to that a little bit later drop a line with your thoughts down below
let's get to it i'm gonna actually hop over to my computer we're gonna get down to this little uh
scene right here we're gonna go onto the computer so i can walk you through exactly my credit karma
report and tell you all the details of how you can get an 800 plus credit score so here we are
all right we're on on credit karma's website uh there's a link down below in the description click
on that link that'll take you over to credit card get started today i'm going to walk you through
exactly what's going on the very first thing of course we got to do is log into the thing
and i'll do that right now and then here we are my friends and as i shared with you on
that video here's my 800 score so how this works and in fact what i want you to do if you haven't
seen that original video yet i'll include a link to that video above as well as down below in the
description and it talks about a little bit of how credit comment actually works how they calculate
credit scores but they pull from two different ways transunion which is one of the major
credit reporting bureaus as well as equifax there is another one called experian but for this
purpose they only have these two what's really cool about credit karma as you can see right here
it's checked daily on transunion i think that's kind of cool equifax is usually i think it's like
once a week or so it'll pop in a new score here or an updated score based on what is going on
so i got to tell you guys really quick years ago i would hop over to annualcreditreport.com
and uh once a year i would just pull up my credit report now that was my credit report not my credit
score so it was just kind of like that was what i was doing just to kind of monitor my credit
and sometimes i would use my credit card benefits to see what my credit score was but i'll tell you
what now that i use credit karma it's been just super easy you can either do it this way here on
the browser as we have up right now or you can hop over on the phone there's an app for credit karma
that you can keep an eye on as well so here's the trick what i'm going to do is i'm going to walk
you through exactly how i do this and why it's important let's say you're sitting here with a 500
or a 600 credit score how do you get that up into the exceptional range you want to get it
as high as possible the maximum score is an 850 so higher the better all right i'm going to click on
we'll start with transunion and as you see here on the browser you just click on whatever you want
okay so i'm going to start with transients click on it and that's going to take you over to this
next screen now here's where it's going to show you some history and i want to point something out
because i know a lot of you are going to zoom in here right now and be like wait a minute look
what's going on down here you weren't at an 800 back here in early 2021. what's going on here 791
i was doing a test and specifically what i was doing back here is i decided to max out
one of my credit cards i still pay it off every single month in full so that way i'm not debt
free and carrying over a balance but because i maxed out that credit card my utilization
went very low and when your utilization goes low your credit score drops and i'll explain what
that means in just a moment but as you can see right now i'm sitting at an 814 you can see up
here went up to an 817 all is fine that's great if i want to hop over to equifax i can either
go back to the home screen or just click right here and right here we go 811 went up to an 814
and down here to 787 during my little test so i'm gonna hop back to transient the very first thing
you want to do is look down below here this is the key of what you want to look at when
it comes down to how do i improve my credit score the very first thing is your payment history the
easiest way to get your credit score up are these two right here payment history and credit card use
now if you've had some prior months where you weren't doing too well with your payment history
you're gonna have to keep focusing on that it's a little bit more of a marathon but
every single month make sure you pay your credit card on time at minimum and pay your loans on time
every single month don't ever ever delay no matter what you can do scrape as much money
get a side hustle work for dominoes deliver pizza on the weekends figure your way out to never have
to be late on any payments ever that's a key point the next step and this is important let's say your
payment history is on point but your credit score is at like a 600 or 700 you want to get
it up a little bit higher and you're like well my payment history which is a high impact a very
good weight to your credit score that's looking great well the next step you want to look at is
over here at the credit card use it's basically looking at how much of your available credit line
are you using creditors look at it this way if all of a sudden you have like let's say a twenty
thousand dollar limit on your credit and you're using nineteen thousand dollars that means you
only have one thousand dollars left to spend on credit the higher that amount is the more risky
creditors find you to be the reason for that is they're worried that you're going to go rogue
and you might not be able to pay your bills because you have too much racked up in debt
so i'm going to actually dive into this is another cool thing about credit card if you
click on any one of these boxes it'll give you a deeper dive i'm going to click on credit card use
for an example it's going to pop me over here and let me know what's going on first thing i want to
point out is right over here check this out right here two percent so i have an eighty four thousand
dollar credit line right now at fifteen hundred dollars is being used this is basically my uh
credit card that i continuously pay off in full every single month sometimes i don't always hit
the statement date so it gets reported but look at this zero to nine percent is boom bam great
10 to 29 is still good so i'll give you one thumb up instead of two and then we get serious around
49 to 30 percent anything down below here is what you want to avoid my friends is 49 down to 75
plus if you're using that much of your available credit right here you got to stop you got to get
this down to at least 29 or preferably in the low nine eight seven six five four three two one
okay so that's what's going on here now another thing it will do is let you know what's actually
going on with all your different credit now this will pull in any type of credit card you have
and that's what you want to zero in on now right now you can see right here i have
this one amex which only has a 7 800 limit so what i decided to do a couple months ago is i
i said okay well my overall credit which i shared with you right over here at 84 000 that's looking
good so if i jump this over here let's say i jump right here it says amex right and i say i'm going
to max that out to 7 800 let's give it a try right so i decide to put like five thousand dollars on
it well what's going to happen is that particular card which you can see is green right now will go
to potentially orange or red which orange red is 50 to 75 plus and for that you can actually have
a risk of bringing your credit score down just a little bit as a result of maxing out one credit
so that's kind of weird you gotta also look at not only your overall credit card use but your
individual credit card use too this is why i never recommend getting a store credit card because if
you get like a store credit card at like a target or sears is sears even around anymore i don't know
but anyway you get a store credit card jcpenney jcpenney still around we'll say jcpenney you go
in you get that kind of credit card typically their store credit cards come with a very low
balance 500 a thousand five thousand dollars and if you're buying a major purchase right
away on that store credit card you end up having a higher utilization it impacts your credit score
so this is your ace in the hole in my opinion to focus on first is credit card utilization and
that will help you quickly turn around a better credit score and you can monitor it right here
on creditcardman.com month over month week of the week to see if that helps improve you a little bit
so another high impact is any derogatory marks so if you have one of these this is another marathon
one just like the payment history but a collection a tax lien bankruptcy anything like that if you
found yourself in that trap before you're gonna have to just ride out the wave you got to let some
years pass you by in order to get back up onto the good mark i know that sucks to hear but guys that
doesn't mean give up it's like the old adage of saying well just because i have one flat tire on
my car i'm going to take a knife and slash all the rest of the three of them you don't do that you
fix the one tire so focus on that don't slash and just give up and who cares about this i give up
now just take the time let it go away and things will improve bankruptcies i believe stay on your
record for about seven to ten years so that'll be something to keep in mind then we get down
into the lower things that things don't matter as much and that's the credit age the total accounts
which is a low impact and your hard inquiries so here's the deal uh hard inquiries first of
all credit climate as they're checking every single day on transunion and once a week or so on
equifax that's not considered a hard inquiry so you don't have to worry about credit karma ruining
your credit score they do what is called a soft inquiry not a hard inquiry so just keep that in
mind a hard inquiry is something like a mortgage application or an auto loan anything like that is
called a hard inquiry now you can see i've had three and that's usually in the last i believe
a year or two it's actually two years so in fact i can click on here it'll tell me so let's see here
it's a temporary ding i usually bounce back in about three months plan ahead nine to 12 months
before getting a mortgage or a big loan so yeah the the key here is you know try to give it at
least a year or so and keep those inquiries down the reason i have high inquiries at the moment
is i'm actually looking at once again refinancing the mortgage we are actually gonna pay off our
mortgage early in five years i can't wait i'm gonna update you guys here on the channel about
it so make sure you subscribe so you don't miss those video updates but obviously i
got to take a little bit of a ding here on my heart inquiries and i'll have to get over that
but anyway so that's kind of what that's all about credit age that's pretty simple the longer
you have had credit the better so if you are a student and you're just getting started off
you've turned 18 get yourself a credit card and be smart with it do not use money you don't have
just use it for your everyday bills that you already have cash in the bank for and then pay
off the credit card in full every single month and that'll just help you kind of get some credit
rolling without getting yourself caught up into a big trouble problem of uh of debt right all right
so now let's hop over to equifax really quick and same type of thing here so what strange you'll see
here is everything else kind of checks out like transunion but here it actually has credit age
six years and two months which is giving me a yellow bar a little bit less and then hard
inquiries of six which is red so let's check out what's going on there sometimes what you'll see
is that depending on the creditor they're gonna either ping transunion or equifax maybe they not
maybe they don't get reporting from all three of the credit reporting bureaus so in this case
equifax was used more by mother creditors than transunion it just happens that's just something
that happens okay so i wish this would actually go back it doesn't let me go back any further
than what i see here for the beginning of the year because obviously i want to show you my 800 from
before so you don't think i'm trying to recover here but anyway this was a test and it obviously
worked to what i was trying to do to see if that one credit card could bring my score down and it
certainly did bring me down to about a 787 but what you got to do guys hop over to credit karma
and dig into each one of these categories these are the things to focus on again focus on payment
history and most importantly credit card use first these are the things with the high impact that
will help bring you up a little bit quicker so now more than ever guys an 800 credit score a 700
credit score 700 plus is always important you know why because it is not only a key factor in helping
you with some of the biggest purchases in your life such as a house you want to buy a house you
sometimes need a good credit score in order to get a good mortgage not only that some jobs are also
now looking at your credit report and your credit score and offering you a job i know that sounds
absurd but some people are doing this now because they want to see how well does this person handle
their money and their overall credit as a key factor of how they handle their life are they
a potential good prospective employee don't be on the wrong side of that fence guys be smart
start today here's some other videos you're going to find like that are incredibly badass
you got to check them out right now click either one of these and we'll see you on the next video