 TITLE: Will a 700 Credit Score Affect How Much I Can Borrow? CONTENT: How to Improve Your 700 Credit Score Before Applying for Credit\n---------------------------------------------------------------\nIf you've got a 700 credit score, you're on your way to having excellent credit, but here are a few things you can do to improve your credit score:\n*   **Continue paying your bills on time.** On-time payments are an important part of improving your credit. While the damage from a missed payment diminishes over time, even one missed payment can be a big setback and impact your score for years.\n*   **Pay down credit card balances.** Your credit utilization ratio, a measure of your credit cards' reported balances versus their credit limits, is another important scoring factor. Focus on paying down credit card debt or using a debt consolidation loan to lower your revolving balance and improve your utilization rate. Or, if you use your cards frequently and don't carry a balance, you may want to make payments during your statement period to reduce the balance that's reported to the credit bureaus.\n*   **Get prequalified.** A new credit application can lead to a hard inquiry, which can lower your credit score slightly even if you don't get approved. While credit scoring models allow for rate shopping and may ignore some hard inquiries, you can avoid unnecessary hard inquiries by getting prequalified or preapproved for a loan with a soft inquiry—which never hurts your score. The credit score harm, if any, that can result from a hard inquiry is small, and temporary, however, so it's not something you should lose sleep over.\nWhile a higher credit score may help you qualify for a larger loan and better rates, remember that your score is only one of the many factors that creditors consider. Whether you're trying to buy a home, car, take out a personal loan or open a new credit card, look for ways to improve your overall creditworthiness—not just your score. END