Archer Credit has put together this Debt Infographic that covers the epidemic the U.S. consumer is facing regarding borrowing.

There’s a lot of emphasis put on deleting negative items from your Credit Reports to increase your Credit Score. As there should be. Deleting negative items is the fastest, and quite possibly, easiest way to help you fix your credit and get the score you need to qualify for a loan. Especially if you’re using a credit repair service that knows exactly what they’re doing. And let’s face it. At 35% of your credit score, fixing your negative items is not something you should ignore.

But let’s talk about the next most important part of your FICO credit score: your debt-to-credit ratio (which is 30% of your score). It’s simply how much debt you have compared to how much credit you have available to you. You know, like having a $1,000 line of credit and you’ve used $900 of that. That would put you at a 90% debt-to-credit ratio. Which is bad.

You see, credit lenders and credit Bureaus, and even FICO (pretty much anyone who gives you a credit score) don’t like to see maxed-out credit. They don’t even like to see your debt-to-income ratio above 50%. That’s simply because when people max out their credit, it usually means they’re hurting for cash flow. And that usually means they’re at a higher chance of defaulting on a loan or credit card payment. It’s not always the case, but we live in a world of numbers and creditors don’t see you for the hard-working, real person you are. They see your maxed-out credit line. And so your score plunges.

So, to see a dramatic increase in your score, you need to fix your debt-to-credit ration. And there are several ways to go about this.

1) Pay down your debts. We have a handy snowballing spreadsheet on our Reducing Your Debts page from our credit score guide.

2) Increase your line of credit. It might feel like a cheat, but it works, because the math works. Of course, if you are not ready to commit to stop spending, this might not be the best option for you.

3) Get a new line of credit. The same way that increasing your line of credit works, so does adding another line of credit.

All of these options can be explained more on our Reducing Your Debts page. But no matter how you go about it, sitting around waiting for debts to pay themselves off will do you no good. It’s the boring part of Credit Repair; it really is. But who said this was going to be a day at the park?

The 2nd biggest part your Credit Score is your Debt to Credit Ratio. This makes up 30% of your credit score and can be the hardest to improve. The reason your debt to credit ratio can be so hard to improve because it involves paying down your debts, which takes money. If we all had extra money to spare, we wouldn’t have bad credit to begin with.

There are two ways to improve your debt to credit ratio. You can pay down your debt or increase your credit limits. Increasing credit limits will work best with creditors that you have a good track record with and you have paid on time for a long time. Asking for an credit limit increase will usually put a inquiry on your credit report. So make sure you ask for all your increases at the same time, so they don’t hurt your credit score while asking for another one.

Of course reducing your debt is important. A good strategy for paying down debt is using the snowball method. This is where you set apart a certain amount each month to pay off your debt. You apply it to your credit account with the highest interest rate first. Once that is paid off you continue using the money you were paying on your first credit account and add it to your 2nd account. You do this until all your credit accounts are paid off.

The credit card companies would like you think you should have a balance to show you are using your credit cards. This is not true. The best thing you can do is have everything paid off with zero balance. This will give you the best debt to credit ratio and help your credit score the most.