 TITLE: How Does Your Credit Score Impact Your Retirement? CONTENT: How to Keep Your Score High During Retirement\n---------------------------------------------\nMaintaining, building and rebuilding your credit isn't any different now that you're retired—the same factors will determine your credit scores.\nThe good news is that you likely have a long credit history, which can be good for your credit scores. Other important scoring factors include your payment history and credit usage. To address those, you can:\n*   **Continue making your payments on time.** Your payment history is the most important credit scoring factor, and it encompasses all the positive and negative marks associated with your accounts. Making payments on time is best for your credit, while missing a payment, having an account sent to collections or declaring bankruptcy can hurt your credit.\n*   **Pay down revolving account balances.** Your credit utilization rate shows how much of your available credit you're using. Keeping your account balances well below credit limits is best for your scores. Experts recommend a utilization rate of 30% or less to maintain good credit scores. To avoid paying interest on credit cards, try to pay off your balance in full each month.\nOther factors can also be important, such as whether you have experience paying off installment loans and managing credit cards (having a mix of accounts can help your scores)—or whether you've recently applied for a new loan or card, which can ding your credit scores a little.\nAnother thing to keep in mind is that if you're entering retirement without any debt, you may be in a great financial situation. However, without an open loan or credit card, you might not be scoreable because there isn't any recent information in your credit reports.\nTo maintain your credit without paying interest, you could open a credit card, use the card for a small monthly bill and then pay off the balance in full each month. This can add a current account to your credit reports and help you maintain a recent record of on-time payments and low utilization. END