Financial knowledge deserves a place in everyone’s lives. With it, you can help yourself from falling into bad budgeting habits, irresponsible spending routines, or late and missed payments. These factors may also affect your credit score. Learn more about what may impact it and how to help keep your credit score healthy.

Payment History

Paying back what you borrow on time is a big deal because it may be counted as a part of your credit score. Every payment, whether paid by the due date, late, or not at all, is a detail of your payment history and may make an impact on your present score.

How to positively affect your credit score:

• Pay every bill on time, every time.

• Keep reminders for due dates or set up an autopay system.

• If a late payment is unavoidable, contact your lender to keep an open line of communication and for a possible payment plan option if necessary.

Credit Accounts & History Age

Your credit history shows all your open and active credit accounts. It can also show closed accounts that were in good standing for 10 years from the day they were closed. And if you have any accounts that were delinquent, they may show for seven years from the original delinquency date.

The length of time your accounts have been open may impacts your credit score. The length of time maycan give lenders more data on your credit usage, like if you’re new to credit borrowing or if you have a long history.

How to positively affect your credit score:

• A positive and lengthy credit account history can showcase good credit use.

• Keep your older accounts open, so your credit history’s average age stays up.

• Responsibly managing your established credit accounts can be beneficial.

Credit Applications

If you want to improve your credit score, it may cross your mind to get your name out there and submit a lot of credit or loan applications.

Please do not do this.

If you flood lenders with applications, your credit will be checked multiple times by various lenders and that could negatively impact your credit score.

How to positively affect your credit score:

• If you want to apply for more credit, choose only one or two lenders to submit applications to and wait.

• By taking it slowly, you can show you are a responsible (potential or current) credit holder.

• When you take credit usage seriously, you can build more healthy financial habits.

Give Yourself Credit

Knowing what can factor into your credit score is good financial information you can use for the rest of your life. This mainly falls into healthy habits like paying bills on time, managing your credit accounts well, and being responsible with your money and credit. When you build on good money sense, you may see the benefits show up in your credit score.