What YOU Need to Know About Your Credit Score
– And how you can improve it!
The Top 5 Credit Score Factors:
- Payment History: Even one missed payment can harm your score. Payment history accounts for 35% of your credit score!
- Credit Utilization: The total revolving credit you currently use is divided by the total of all your revolving credit limits. Credit utilization accounts for 30% of your credit score. Using MORE than 30% of your available credit is a negative sign to creditors.
- Credit History Length: The age of your oldest credit account, the age of your newest credit account, and the average age of all your accounts. The longer your credit history, the higher your credit score! Credit history accounts for 15% of your credit score.
- Credit Mix: Providing a diverse portfolio of credit accounts, including a car loan, credit card, student loan, mortgage, or other credit products. Credit scoring models assess these as an indication of how well you manage a wide range of credit products. The Credit mix makes up 10% of your credit score.
- New Credit: Accounts for when applying for a new credit line and the number of credit accounts you’ve recently open. Several accounts or inquiries can indicate increase risk. New credit accounts for 10% of your credit score.
What Can Hurt My Credit Score?
- Missing Payments
- Using too much available credit
- Applying for a lot of credit in a short period
- Defaulting on accounts
What Can Improve My Credit Score?
- Pay your bills on time: Paying your bills every month promptly is CRITICAL.
- Pay down debt: Reduce your credit card balance to improve and lower your credit utilization ratio. This is a super quick way to give your credit score boost.
- Make any outstanding payments: Bring past due payments up to date! This can save your credit score from plummeting! Late payments in credit files include how the payment was – 30, 60, 90 days! The longer you wait, the larger the impact on your credit scores.
- Dispute inaccurate information on your report: It is essential to monitor your credit reports to ensure no inaccurate information appears. If something is out of place, initiate a dispute ASAP. Your scores can suffer because of inaccurate information.
- Limit new credit requests: Hard inquires stay on your credit report for two years. Therefore, reduce this by limiting the number of times you ask for new credit.
Sources:
https://www.mortgageblog.com/five-factors-of-credit-scoring/