I went from a 582 credit score to a 751 in 14 months. The improvement wasn't from a hack — it was from doing a few boring things consistently.

The biggest factors in my improvement: paying down credit card balances to below 10% utilization (utilization was 78% before, which is brutal for your score), setting up autopay on all cards to never miss a payment, and getting a credit limit increase on two existing cards without increasing spending.

I did not open new accounts, dispute anything, or use any credit repair service. The score improvement came entirely from fixing the two things that were dragging it down: utilization and payment history.

One counterintuitive thing I learned: closing old accounts can hurt your score by reducing your total available credit. I left my oldest card open with a small recurring charge on it.