Your credit score is without a doubt one of the most important aspects of your personal finances. Even when you want to up the available credit line, your credit score will be the deciding factor.
Other than your credit score, the lenders will take a look into your credit report(s). Your credit report, unlike your credit score, includes detailed information. Perhaps the most important one being the available credit and payment history.
What effects my credit score?
Generally, everything related to credit cards and loans affects an individual’s credit score. This can have either a good or a bad effect. Which one is going to depend on how responsible you are with payments. Even missing a payment for a few days can set your credit score back. This happens in repeated situations much more severely.
Also, whenever you apply for new credit, the lender(s) not giving approval can have a bad impact on credit score as well. This will inform another lender that you are not creditworthy, thus, giving a heads up to other lenders. This is one way that lenders take to protect their money. So make sure that you have a high chance of getting the loan or credit card you’re looking for before actually applying.
Increasing Credit Score
Having bad credit is certainly something bad you can always recover. The first thing you should always do is to track your payments and make them on time.
If you don’t have any available credit to you, we recommend getting a secured credit card. You will have to make a deposit first in order to get the credit card but as you use it in time, you may be able to get the deposit back. If not, you can just close the credit account once you qualify for other credit cards.
Find My Credit Score
There are multiple types of credit scores but the most commonly used by lenders is the FICO Score. As of now, there is no way you can check it for free but certain credit card companies offer if you use theirs. For example, Capital One offers this along with some of their credit cards. So there isn’t a free way to check credit score.
However, you can check your VantageScore 3.0 on many credit card company’s websites. This isn’t going to be exactly like your FICO Credit Score but it should give you an idea on your creditworthiness. Unfortunately, there isn’t any conversion you can do from VantageScore 3.0 to FICO Credit Score. Read the articles below to learn more about credit score in general.