Just opening a credit card will improve your score, just have your subscriptions and bills on it, and then pay the statement balance at the end of the month. No interest charged or anything, and no need to actually take out a loan.
If you don't have a credit card already, you can ask about options at your bank or credit union like other posters said. If you have a short credit history, then Discover It is a good place to start, just apply online.
If you have no or bad history, then get a "secured card". You pay the bank a couple hundred bucks or something as collateral, and you get that amount as your "credit line". After you've shown that you can pay the bill on time for 3-6 months, you can usually upgrade it to a standard card (and get your money back). Of course, many people can't afford to leave a couple hundred bucks sitting around for so long, so it has its issues, to say the least. A final alternative is to have someone cosign on a card, which basically means that they are equally liable for whatever happens with the card. You get all the benefits of the card, but your cosigner is trusting you to not fuck up or screw them over, so it's not ideal unless it's like a spouse or something imo.
Good credit takes around 3-5 years to build if you're starting from nothing, great credit takes 6-8 years, so it's worth opening lines of credit as soon as possible (and not really using them, of course). As long as you don't miss a payment, banks will offer accounts with almost-decent interest rates and increasingly higher credit lines that you can use in an emergency situation.
Just opening a credit card will improve your score, just have your subscriptions and bills on it, and then pay the statement balance at the end of the month. No interest charged or anything, and no need to actually take out a loan.
If you don't have a credit card already, you can ask about options at your bank or credit union like other posters said. If you have a short credit history, then Discover It is a good place to start, just apply online.
If you have no or bad history, then get a "secured card". You pay the bank a couple hundred bucks or something as collateral, and you get that amount as your "credit line". After you've shown that you can pay the bill on time for 3-6 months, you can usually upgrade it to a standard card (and get your money back). Of course, many people can't afford to leave a couple hundred bucks sitting around for so long, so it has its issues, to say the least. A final alternative is to have someone cosign on a card, which basically means that they are equally liable for whatever happens with the card. You get all the benefits of the card, but your cosigner is trusting you to not fuck up or screw them over, so it's not ideal unless it's like a spouse or something imo.
Good credit takes around 3-5 years to build if you're starting from nothing, great credit takes 6-8 years, so it's worth opening lines of credit as soon as possible (and not really using them, of course). As long as you don't miss a payment, banks will offer accounts with almost-decent interest rates and increasingly higher credit lines that you can use in an emergency situation.