Consumer advocacy

What Is A Good Credit Score?

Credit bureaus consider a good credit score as anything above a 700.

What Factors Affect My Credit Score?

The five main factors that affect your credit score are:

1. Payment History: 35%
2. Credit Utilization: 30%
3. Length of Credit History: 15%
4. Different Types of Credit: 10%
5. New Credit: 10%

What Causes a  Bad Credit Score? 

Reasons for a negative credit score come in many forms, including:

• Overdue bill payments
• Maxed out credit cards
• Charge offs and collection accounts
• Foreclosures
• Identity theft
• Excessive third-party inquiries

How many credit cards should you have?

There’s no right number of credit cards for every person — it all depends on your needs.

For one thing, you don’t have to get a credit card at all if you don’t want one. Some people know that a card will be too big of a temptation to overspend, so they forgo credit cards entirely and choose to build credit in other ways.

Other people like to maximize rewards from cards, so they get a few that allow them to reap the benefits from every type of spending they do. However, it can be hard to keep track of your finances with a lot of cards. If you’re likely to miss payments or rack up debt, then maybe having multiple cards isn’t for you.

Having more cards could also affect your credit in a lot of different ways (e.g. changing your credit utilization rate or your average account age) beyond missing payments, so it’s important to consider the full impact of a card before go wild with applications. Plus, you should consider that each application could trigger a hard inquiry, which may affect your credit. The immediate benefit of a card should only be part of what you consider.

What is credit improvement?

Credit improvement is the process of challenging any questionable negative items that could be hurting your credit profile.