I went bankrupt 2 years ago. FICO at 642. NEED ADVICE! HELP!?

I only this year started to get credit cards, started paying school loans, got a totally new phone service, and have hospital bills ( not sure if they count towards credit).





Anyways I opened about 5 credit card accounts, used them up quite a bit, and paid of course, and have been paying all of my other bills.





Everything's been solid and quite fine.





My FICO score in april was 610, then went to 623 then to 634 then to 642. seems to be rising slowly monthly.





Is this normal? And is this score okay at all?





I did go bankrupt in Jan of 2005, so not sure if by this time this score is good, bad, or fair.





Also, if I keep paying by bills will it go up even higher, or stall? And can the score ever drop by a few points, even if I do nothing wrong?





Also, if I don't use 4 of 5 of my Ccards at all, does that hurt any?





Do hospital bills, phone bill, other bills count towards credit?





How could i ACTIVELY work on increasing my score dramatically?





HELP!I went bankrupt 2 years ago. FICO at 642. NEED ADVICE! HELP!?
The slow rise is normal, but don't expect the 10-13 points every month to continue. Unless something major changes you can really expect it to stablize between 0 and 4 points per month on average.





The suggestion of closing the account is a bad idea. One major factor is utilization of your credit cards. This is your total avaiable credit compared to your credit used. Ideally the best help to your score will be when you keep this at or under 30%. So if on all of your cards total you have a $2000 total limit. You should not use over $600. To really help your score you should use each card every month for purchases you would usually make with cash, again not going over the 30%. Then at the end of the month pay off the accounts to avoid interest. This shows activity and will also help your score.





The score is based on a lot of factors, so yes it could drop even if you do nothing at all, but again the changes will be minor. The site below is the company that does the FICO Score and you can read a bit more on how the scores are calculated.I went bankrupt 2 years ago. FICO at 642. NEED ADVICE! HELP!?
Bad Advice above!!!





DO NOT CLOSE CREDIT CARDS, it hurts your score!!!





You get credit for the amount of time that you have had an account open. Closing it takes away from this.
Your credit score is below average, but it's really terrific considering that you have a bankruptcy on your record. You must be doing a lot of things right.





Paying your bills on time and keeping your credit card balances low are the biggest things you can do right now. I think you're right that your credit score will plateau at some point. A bankruptcy stays on your credit report for ten years and, as long as it's there, will be a big negative on your score. Fortunately, as you've been discovering, you can still qualify for credit and get quite a respectable FICO score by demonstrating responsible use of credit.
Your credit would raise faster if you closed 2 or 3 of the cards...once you have more than 2 cards your score starts going down.





You need to pay the medical bills so they don't go to collections...medical bills do not show up on your credit report until they go into default and get sold to a collections company.





The phone bill is great, but that doesn't get reported to the credit bureau either...so it is really important to be paing on the credit cards and keeping them under 50% of available credit and paying on time every month!