According to credit experts, making a credit report inquiry only eats up around 10% of the criteria for a credit score adjustment, and some experts say that credit score may go down each time a credit report is requested. Will too many inquiries pull your credit score down? Here's a look at the real score when making credit report inquiries. Arrange For Automatic Payments For Every Type Of Loan To keep your sanity intact during a financial crisis, it would help if you carefully manage all your bill payments. By arranging for an automatic payment system for all your bills and loans, you won t need to scamper to the bank each time you forgot to pay the utility bill, or the credit card loan. Timely payments make for happy credit card owners, while late or missed credit card payments are an exercise in futility, and paves the way for your constant haranguing by collection agencies, and also cuts deep wounds in your credit score. Avoid Getting Extra Credit Cards If you can live with just one credit card, then by all means remain happy with only one card at your disposal. As the credit experts often say, it takes time to repair your credit score. Myth No. 3 Closing Old Accounts Helps Boost Your Credit Report This myth s nothing but a common delusion. The truth is that closing old accounts won t affect your credit score, but opening these old accounts will surely hurt your score. Get A Secured Credit Card Once your bankruptcy has already been discharged, slowly build back your credit, by getting a secured or prepaid credit card. A prepaid credit card can act like a debit card, where you put in cash, and you draw against it, and you reload the card again. Always make it a habit to not use more than 40 percent of your credit limit on any revolving loan. For instance, if you had a $60,000 credit limit on your credit card, and you ve only so far used $6,000, or 10% of the credit limit, your balance must never go up to as much as 30 percent of your card s credit limit. Always make sure that you maintain a balanced proportion of used credit to available credit.