A Credit Score is something most people have heard mentioned in passing, but only really come to understand the importance of when an important purchase needs to be financed. Your credit score can impact your ability to buy a home, car or get a credit card. It may seem like a magic number, but the information is there for those who want to find out how to increase their score. While it differs by country, in this article we will focus on US credit scores.
In the US the FICO score is the main scoring algorithm used to decide your consumer credit score. The number one factory in determining your credit score is payment history. This means you should put a premium on never missing a payment. However what actually gets reported to the credit bureaus are payments that are more than 30 days overdue, so you don’t have to sweat being a couple days late to a payment. That is a sign that you should probably set up autopayments for the minimum balance though at least each month.