Removing Negative Items

The perfect credit profile has 0 negative marks. No late payments within the last 12 months. No charge off accounts. No collections. No Repos. No medical debt. No bankruptcies. If you have any of these items on your credit report, then you need to start the dispute process immediately to get them removed.

Adding Positive Information

As well as removing negative information from your credit file, you need to be adding positive data points monthly as well. This means on time monthly payment history on all accounts. Less than 10% utilization on all credit cards on a monthly basis (statement date), at least 3 revolving accounts (credit cards) and 2 loans (installment accounts), 5 - 7+ years of average age of credit (use authorized users) and less than 3 -4 inquiries in the past 6 months. Your main concerns are payment history and utilization. 

Strategically Applying For New Credit

Building your credit profile requires you to add new accounts. But you want to do this strategically. I know there are a bunch of credit cards, credit builder loans, rent reporting apps and more out there that you can easily add to your credit profile with no impact to your credit. But we want to make sure that we are adding quality tradelines that are attractive to lenders. Because your credit is not so much about your score as it is about your overall credit profile.