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Your FICO score, also known as your credit score, has much to say about you. It can control your financial destiny. Whether you’re able to qualify to finance a car, mortgage a home, or even qualify for monthly billing with your utility companies can be dictated by your FICO score. With all that’s at stake it’s important to understand what goes into computing your individual score and how you can best manage it.

While the exact algorithm for calculating FICO scores is a closely guarded secret, FICO (formerly known as the Fair Isaac Corporation) has disclosed the components to the score. They are as follows:

35%: Payment history

30%: Credit utilization

15%: Length of credit history

10%: Types of credit

10%: Recent searches for credit

If you want to vitally increase your credit score I highly recommend concentrating on the first two areas. Together these two components have the highest weighted impact on your overall score. So let’s delve into what is meant by payment history and credit utilization.

Payment history is simple to understand. Did you pay your bills? Did you pay them on time? That’s pretty much all there is to it. If you want to improve your credit start paying all your bills and debt payments on time. Most people who end up with a less-than-favorable FICO score do so because of late payments.

Credit Utilization is a fancy way of saying that FICO is looking at how much of your available “revolving debt” you’re using. They look at the ratio of how much of your available lines of credit you’re carrying as debt. If you have a $10,000 line of credit or a credit card limit, and you’re only carrying a balance of $3,000, your credit utilization ratio will be much favorable than someone with the same limit carrying an $8,000 balance.

The best way to have a better FICO score: pay all your bills and debt payments on time, and carry a relatively small balance compared to your available credit limit.

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