A five-step plan to improve your credit score in 2026

‘Credit is like a muscle, you have to use it to have it,’ one expert said

Creating a plan to achieve better credit is critical to your success, as it frees up the mental energy you need to complete your New Year’s resolutions (AFP via Getty Images)

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Will 2026 be the year you make big improvements to your credit score?

The answer to that question is a matter of planning and follow-through, for the most part. You have to be intentional about improving your credit, says debt and bankruptcy attorney Ashley Morgan, owner of Virginia-based Ashley F. Morgan Law, PC.

“Credit is like a muscle, you have to use it to have it,” Morgan told The Independent in an email. “You monitoring your credit is like reviewing your stats; tracking what is going on with your credit ensures you know where you stand. If you see your credit dropping, you know that you need to adjust what you are doing.”

Creating a plan to achieve better credit is critical to your success, as it frees up the mental energy you need to complete your New Year’s resolutions, Wake Forest University Professor of Psychology E.J. Masicampo said in an interview in December.

Improving your credit score can also provide considerable benefits when you apply for credit cards and loans, potentially saving you thousands of dollars over your lifetime. Below are five simple steps you can take to improve your credit score in 2026.

Creating a plan to achieve better credit is critical to your success, as it frees up the mental energy you need to complete your New Year’s resolutions (AFP via Getty Images)

Check your history

Pushing your credit score higher requires an important first step: checking your credit history. You can obtain this from all three credit bureaus - Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion - at AnnualCreditReport.com.

Your credit history lists all of the credit accounts you’ve had in your name (including home, auto, and student loans.) It will also list your payment history on those accounts, the balances, bankruptcies, unpaid child support and alimony, and other information, according to credit bureau Equifax.

Lenders use your credit history to determine how much risk you bring with you. For example, if you have a history of making late payments, a lender may see that as a red flag and bump up your interest rate to balance out your risk.

Reading over your credit history can be an eye-opening experience if you’ve never done it before. It can be helpful, too, as you’ll get a comprehensive view of who you are as a borrower.

Find the errors and fix them

Read through all of your active accounts (ones that haven’t been closed) and identify any that you don’t recognize.

Look over the unfamiliar accounts and, if you don’t remember opening them, you may need to dispute an account to find out if someone used your personal information to open it.

Check whether you have any accounts that have payments reported as 30, 60, 90, or 120 days late, and if they’ve gone to collections. If this information is inaccurate, start the dispute process because these negative marks on your history can significantly lower your credit score. Additionally, they can remain on your credit report for up to seven years, according to credit bureau Experian.

Resolving inaccuracies can provide a nice boost to your credit score, especially if those errors are about late payments or collections accounts in the past six months. Recent derogatory information has a more severe impact immediately after than it does months or years down the road, according to Credit Karma.

“There [is] a large chunk of credit reports that have errors,” Morgan said. “Now, often these errors are not of huge consequence, but they can sometimes impact your credit significantly. Also, you never know when you might need your credit, so staying on top of it prevents having to scramble to fix your credit if there are issues.”

A 2024 study from Consumer Reports and WorkMoney found that 44 percent of consumers who recently checked their credit reports found errors, including “late or missed payments that the consumer knew had been made on time.”

Automate, automate, automate

Your history of making on-time payments is the single most influential factor in your credit score, accounting for 35 percent of your score, according to credit scoring firm FICO.

Switching credit card and loan bills to automatic payments will help you avoid missing them. Payments that are at least 30 days late and reported to credit bureaus can impact your credit score.

Setting up automated bill payments via your mobile device or computer can help ensure you make payments on time and avoid late payments that could hurt your credit (AFP via Getty Images)

The good news is that the more on-time payments you make, the higher your credit score can go, generally speaking.

“Try to fall into a pattern [of] making on-time payments and build a good payment history,” JPMorganChase Vice President of Product, Sachin Gadiyar, told The Independent in an email. “This alone should improve the scores significantly.”

The magic ratio

The second-most influential factor in your credit score is something called “credit utilization,” according to FICO.

The phrase refers to the ratio of a credit account’s balance to its credit limit. So, if you have a credit card with a $2,500 balance and its credit limit is $5,000, your utilization ratio is 50 percent.

Generally speaking, the more of your available credit that you're using at a given time, the more at risk you are of defaulting on a payment, according to FICO. The general rule of thumb is to keep your balances below 30% of their credit limits, the government’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau noted.

So, as you plan to improve your credit in 2026, review all of your credit card accounts, identify their utilization ratios, and make a plan to pay each card down below 30 percent of its limit.

“If your credit card balances are above 30 percent, it is hurting your credit score,” Morgan said. “Getting your credit utilization under 30 percent can help your credit score improve a noticeable amount.”

Why 30 percent? Darwin Tu, co-founder of credit and debt management firm BON Credit, said that once your balances exceed 30 percent of your limit, you move into a riskier utilization category:

• Less than 10 percent: Excellent
• 10 percent to 29 percent: Good
• 30 percent to 50 percent: Risk rising
• Higher than 50 percent: High risk.

“Crossing above 30 percent can trigger a noticeable score drop even if you’ve never missed a payment,” Tu said in an email to The Independent.

Do monthly check-ins

While the steps outlined here are meant to make it easier to improve your credit score, it needs a hands-on approach. Actively checking your credit history and score through free credit monitoring services helps you stay current on anything impacting your score, for better or worse.

“Credit really isn't something that you can set-it-and-forget-it; you need to make sure you are doing everything necessary each month,” Morgan said.