Thinking about your FICO score may invoke several different emotions — confusion, apprehension, or perhaps even pride. This three-digit number is a critical factor in evaluating your financial health. A whopping 90 percent of lenders will use your credit score to determine your creditworthiness. This number will determine whether you’re awarded a loan or credit card and what interest rate and terms you’re offered along with it.
If you have a high credit score, you’ll be able to secure larger loans with smaller interest rates. If you have a lower credit score, you may face some difficulties when it’s time to get a mortgage, car loan, or new line of credit. Understanding what goes into a FICO score will help you fine-tune yours so you can get the numbers as high as possible.
There are five major factors that go into your credit score: payment history, amount owed, length of credit, credit mix, and the amount of new credit that you have. Each factor accounts for a certain percentage of your final score, but do you know which ones are most important?
Once you understand how your credit score is calculated, you can take action to nudge those numbers up. Perhaps you need a better credit mix, with both loans and credit cards. You may find that taking out new credit will increase the amount available and boost your numbers, or you may see that you should avoid new credit to help lengthen your average credit history. Test your knowledge of your FICO score with this quiz.
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