Seven hundred eleven. I read it off my phone in the Walmart parking lot last Saturday, sitting in the truck with the groceries in the back, and Tyler reached over and honked the horn for me. A year ago that number was 662.
We started paying attention to our credit scores last spring, when buying a house went from "someday" to "by the end of 2026." When we apply for a mortgage, our scores help decide whether we get approved and what interest rate we get. Even a small difference in the rate on a house is real money every month for 30 years, so we wanted the best numbers we could get before anybody pulled them for real.
Where we started
In March 2025 my score was 662 and Tyler's was 701. Mine was lower mostly because of one thing. The credit card in my name had $2,140 on it with a $2,500 limit, which means I was using 86 percent of what I had.
We check our scores on a free credit-score site, and once a year we pull our full reports from the free official site for that. Here's how mine moved, at the months that mattered:
| Month | My score | What was going on |
|---|---|---|
| March 2025 | 662 | Card at $2,140 of $2,500 |
| April 2025 | 658 | CR-V loan paid off and closed |
| June 2025 | 691 | Card reported a zero balance |
| September 2025 | 697 | On-time payments |
| December 2025 | 702 | On-time payments |
| April 2026 | 711 | On-time payments, higher card limit |
What actually moved my score
Paying off the card. That was most of it. We paid off the $2,140 at the end of May, and when the card reported a zero balance in June, my score jumped 33 points in one month. Nothing else came close.
Time and boring on-time payments. After June, it crept. Six points by September, five more by December, nine more by April. Every month the student loan and the card got paid on time, and every month my history got a little longer. That's 20 points in ten months. Slow, but it counts.
What didn't do much
Paying off the CR-V. Our last car payment was in March 2025, and I figured my score would go up. It dropped four points. When a loan closes, you have one less account being paid on time every month. It came back, but it surprised me.
A higher credit limit. In January I asked for one, and the card company raised it to $4,000. On paper that lowers how much of my limit I'm using. But I was already using almost none of it, just one small subscription a month that autopay clears, so it barely moved anything.
Not opening anything new. This one isn't something we did, it's something we didn't. No new cards, no store financing on a couch, nothing. Every application can knock a few points off for a while, so we've just left our credit alone, and that's harder than it sounds when every store asks if you want to save 10 percent today.
Checking my score all the time. Looking at your own score doesn't hurt it, and it doesn't help it either. I checked every week for a while. Mostly it made me impatient.
The old medical bill. I was worried about a $180 emergency room bill from 2022 that went to collections before I got it paid. When I pulled my reports, it wasn't on there. Medical collections under $500 don't show up on credit reports anymore. One less thing.
Tyler's side
Tyler went from 701 to 728. His truck is paid off, and he uses one card for gas and pays it in full. His one change: he used to pay it right after the statement came, so every statement reported a balance of $500 or $600, even though he never paid a cent of interest. Now he pays it a few days before the statement closes, so it reports about $40. That was worth about 15 points by itself.
How long it took
Thirteen months from 662 to 711, and most of the jump came in the first three. The rest was waiting. When we met with a loan officer in March, we learned that mortgage pricing usually gets better in steps as scores go up, and that my next steps are 720 and 740. I'm not there yet. We plan to apply for pre-approval later this year, and until then my plan is the same as the last ten months: pay everything on time, keep the card nearly empty, and leave it alone.
