Wednesday, March 17, 2010

What Is the Most Important Thing to Keep a Good Credit Score?

What Is the Most Important Thing to Keep a Good Credit Score?

A credit score is determined using a formula of various factors involving your current and past credit activities. The score is known as a FICO score, which stands for the Fair Isaac Company score.

Factors

    There are five factors in determining your credit score. 35 percent of your score is determined from your payment history. 30 percent of your score is related to outstanding debt. Your length of credit history accounts for 15 percent of your score. New credit and hard inquiries and the types of credit that you have each account for 10 percent of your score. The highest possible score is an 850.

Types

    Payment history is the most important thing affecting your credit score and there are several types of payment history factors to consider. The score will be calculated in part from your account payment history for loans, mortgages, retail accounts, credit cards and finance company accounts. Your score will be docked for delinquent payments and adverse public records like bankruptcy or law suits. Lastly, past due items on file will reduce your score. The more recently these events, delinquencies or past due items have occurred, the lower the credit score will be.

Other

    Other things you can do to improve your credit score is to keep your account balances low, have fewer accounts with balances and fix any credit errors that may be present on your credit report.

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