OnlineCreditProfessor.com - Improve Your Credit Score

OnlineCreditProfessor.com - Improve Your Credit Score
"Understanding Your Credit Score
What does your score mean?
This credit rating system is meant to develop a snapshot of the risk you currently represent to a potential lender. Several factors in your credit file, including length of credit history, number of open accounts, loans, mortgages, public records, and others are calculated to produce a three-digit score between about 300 and 950. While there are other scores used by lenders and insurance companies (some of which were developed by FICO) such as Application and Behavior scores, these other scores take other information into account. Most often a lender will use a combination of your credit score with several other factors when determining your credit risk. However, they all have the same objective, to determine the potential risk of a particular borrower. Whether the score was generated by FICO or another system based on FICO parameters, they all formulate an industry standard three-digit score. This credit score places the borrower in one of three main categories (we named the third one ourselves.) For up-to-date information on credit reporting, credit repair, identity theft, and other financial issues, go to the OnlineCreditProfessor.com Blog.
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Prime, sub-prime, and shafted
Prime: If your credit score is more than 680, you are considered a "prime borrower" . You'll have no problem getting a good interest rate on your home loan, car loan, or credit card.
Sub-Prime: If your credit score is less than 680, you are "sub prime", and will most likely pay a much higher interest rate on your loan.
Shafted: Below 560 is the shafted credit score, or that is how most lenders and credit issuers think of it. You may still get a credit card but you will likely be hit with a security deposit or high acquisition fee. Also, your interest rate will likely be 22 to 23%. Forget about most home loans and the majority of new car loans at this score. Below 560 is not where you want to be. At this level, you will pay much, much more in higher interest and unnecessary fees. In addition, you may even pay more for your insurance rates, and a very low score can even prevent you from getting a job with many companies. If you're in this category Click here for help.
How are credit scores calculated?
The methods of formulating your FICO score may differ slightly depending on the credit bureau. When requesting your score from one of the Credit Bureaus it is important to understand that your score does not come directly from FICO. It is unique to each bureau and is given its own name: Equifax uses "Beacon", Trans Union uses "Empirica", and Experian uses "Experian/Fair Isaac." These credit scores are also referred to as your "Bureau Scores."
Since your score is derived from your bureau data statistics, the score will change every time your report changes. However your score is calculated, it will always take into consideration many different categories of information. No one piece of information, item, or factor determines your score. As the information in your credit report changes, the importance of one or several categories or factors may change in your FICO score. Potential lenders look at many things when making a credit decision, including your income and the kind of credit you are applying for. Your FICO score does not reflect these other facts as it only evaluates the information retained by the credit reporting agencies.
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What factors affect your credit score?
There are five major factors used in credit scoring calculations that determine your overall credit score.
Previous Credit Performance (Payment History) weighted 35%. A potential lender wants to know what your prior payment history is like. Have you paid everything on time, are you late on any payments now, and so on. Your payment history is just one factor used in calculating your score, but it can be the very important.
Current Level of Indebtedness (Amount Owed) weighted 30% How much credit is too much? Can the borrower pay the lender and still afford to pay his or her other bills? When you have available credit it can actually help your ratio of debt to available credit. These are the types of questions that most lenders want to know and the answers are almost as important as your previous credit history.
Amount of Time Credit Has Been In Use (Length of Credit) weighted 15% Generally, the longer the credit history the better your credit score. However, this item only makes up 15% of your total score so even young people, students or others with short histories can still score well overall as long as the other factors are good. If you are new to credit there is little you can do to improve this part of your score, just open an account and be patient.
Pursuit of New Credit weighted 10% Credit is more popular today than ever before. Just look at the number of credit card and loan offers you get via the Internet and in the mail. Consumers can now shop for credit and find the best terms to meet their financial needs. Every time someone runs a credit check on you, it creates an inquiry.
Fair Isaac has changed some of its calculations to account for these trends - specifically, they will treat a group of inquiries - which probably represents a search for the best rate on a single loan - as though it was a single inquiry (note: this only applies to auto or mortgage loan inquiries.) For example, auto loan inquires within 14 days of each other only count as one inquiry.
Types of Credit Experience weighted 10%. Lenders are looking for a healthy mix of different types of credit accounts, installment loans, retail accounts, credit cards, and mortgage. While this factor is not normally a key element in determining your score, it can help a close score. It is not a good idea to try and open different types of credit accounts just to try and make this factor better, as it will likely reduce your score in other areas. Never open accounts you don't intend to use.
The type of credit accounts you have, and how many, can make a big difference. The optimal ratio of installment accounts versus revolving accounts depends on your profile and differs from person to person. One factor that appears to have significant influence on your credit score is your percent of open installment loans. Too many open installment loans can lower this portion of your score. For more information Click here
Improving your credit score
Now that you know how your credit score is calculated, you can begin making changes to your current financial planning. The best things you can do to improve your score are simple.
Pay all your bills on time. While it sounds simple, this is the most important thing you can do to keep your score high. Delinquent or late payments and collections have a major negative impact on your credit score.
Keep balances low on unsecured revolving debt such as credit cards. High outstanding unsecured balances can negatively affect a score. In addition, the amount of your unused credit is an important factor in calculating your score.
Only apply for credit that you really need.
Make sure that all the information listed on your credit report is correct. If it is not correct, dispute it with the credit agencies and/or with the creditor directly. Removing negative items on your credit report has the largest impact on your FICO credit score. Generally, negative items stay on your reports for at least seven years, but you can hire a professional credit report repair service such as Lexington Law Firm to repair your credit for you. While you can try to understand the laws and repair your credit yourself, we have found it's much easier to have a professional do it for you. We strongly recommend using Lexington Law Credit Report Repair, they are the industry leaders in credit repair, and they have a proven track record of removing negative items (even bankruptcies) from credit reports permanently."

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