Sunday, January 24, 2010

There are 5 things that can affect your FICO Scores

1) Payment History. This has the biggest effect on your FICO scores. It accounts for 35% of your score. Paying a debt n time and in full has a positive impact. Late payments, judgments and charge-offs have a negative effect. You should know that if you make a late payment your FICO score WILL go down.

2) Outstanding Balances. This has a 30% effect on your credit scores. The debt ratio or outstanding balance to available credit is important. Keeping that below 50% will help you credit scores. Keeping it below 30% will raise you credit score even more.

3) Length of credit has a 15% impact on your FICO scores. The longer the time that a credit line is open will help your credit scores go up. It is never a good idea to close an account today. Opening new credit cards will decrease the average length, and therefore hurt your credit score.

4) Type of Credit. This has a 10% impact on your credit score. It's good to have a mix of installment loans like car and furniture loans, home loans, and credit card loans.

5) Inquiries. Inquiries have a 10% impact on your credit score. Hard inquiries for credit have a negative impact on your credit score. Each hard inquiry can cost 2 - 50 points on a credit score. Inquiries stay on your credit for up to one year even though you may not see them after 90 days..

Financial Empowerment Network Team and Prime Financial Credit Services

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