How Do I Manage My Credit Score?

 

When managing your credit, be sure to monitor your habits as they are the main determinants of your credit score, but there are also factors outside of your control to be aware of with a good example being identity theft. In the event that your identity is stolen, the perpetrator likely won't consider your utilization rate and may rapidly make purchases under your name. If you remember from "What Can Hurt My Credit Score", both of these actions could damage your credit score if left un-amended. If you see any fraudulent purchases or if your credit history spans before your first home, education, or auto loan you should immediately call the institution associated with the credit account.

If the negative items are legitimate, making sure you are able to reset and start building some good habits will be important.  However, while any positive impacts will always stay on your credit report, negative impacts such as late payments or foreclosures will take up to 7 years to come off and both forms of bankruptcy take 10 years to come off, so it's important to be mindful of how current mistakes can affect your future finances.  A low credit score can result in limited access to credit and high interest rates.

Where Can I Check My Credit Score?

We've spent quite a bit of time explaining how your credit score is calculated, however, before we conclude this module, its important to make sure you know that there is a difference between requesting your credit report vs your credit score.  Your credit report is a complete record of all of the activity that is used to calculate your credit score.  It shows every creditor, your balances and your payment history among other information. This report is) available for free at least one time / year from each of the three credit rating agencies.  You can request a copy of one here Links to an external site.  To maximize your ability to keep track of what's being reported about you, you can pull one of the three agency reports every four months (but as mentioned earlier in this module, they may have slight differences in the information that is reported to them).  Pulling a copy of your credit report is 

In order to see your free credit score which is the evaluation of the activity on your credit report, you can check whether your bank provides it as a free service, you can sign up directly with any of the three credit rating agencies for free access to your credit score or you can use other services such as Credit Karma Links to an external site.