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Increase Credit Score Essay

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Before you attempt to increase your credit score, you need to know the basics. You need to know what a credit score is, how it is developed, and why it is important to you in your everyday life. Lenders certainly know what sort of information they can get from a credit score, but knowing this information yourself can help you better see how your everyday financial decisions impact the financial picture lenders get of you, through your credit score. A few simple tips are all you need to know to understand the basic principles. Tip #1: Understand where credit scores come from If you are going to improve your credit score, then logic has it that you must understand what your credit score is and how it works. Without this information, …show more content…

Credit bureaus use mathematical calcu- lations to arrive at a credit score from the information contained in your credit re- port. Each credit bureau uses different methods to do this (which is why you will have different scores with different companies) but most credit bureaus use the FICO system. FICO is an acronym for the credit score calculating software offered by the
Fair Isaac Corporation. This is, by far, the most used software by many in the finan- cial industry. Credit reports are put together by credit bureaus, which use information from client companies. It works like this: credit bureaus have clients (such as credit card companies and utility companies) who provide them with your payment infor- mation. Once a file is opened on you (i.e. once you open a bank account or have bills to pay) then information about you is stored on this record. If you are late in paying a bill (generally over 30 days late) the clients report this to the credit bureau. Any un- paid bills, overdue bills or other problems with credit count as “dings” on your credit report and affect your score. Information such as what type of credit account you have, how much debt you have, how regularly you pay your bills on time

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