 TITLE: Understanding Credit Score Risk Factors CONTENT: Taking Action in Response to Risk Factors\n-----------------------------------------\nTo prioritize your response to risk factors, look for words that indicate steps you can take immediately.\n*   **\"Too high\"**: These words appearing in your risk factors may indicate that your outstanding card balances are pushing your scores downward or your overall debt level is considered excessive, and your score would benefit by reducing it.  \n    There is, of course, some debt you may not be able to address right away, such as the balance on a mortgage or car loan. But if you have outstanding credit card balances, identifying the accounts that are hurting your score the most and devising a strategy to pay them down as soon as possible would likely benefit your credit score relatively quickly.\n*   **\"Delinquency\" or \"Delinquencies\"**: If these words appear in a risk factor, damage has already been done to your credit score, unfortunately—but you can take steps to prevent that harm from recurring and clear the way for future score improvements.  \n    Delinquencies are missed payments, the single events that do more harm to credit scores than any other. Credit scores can rebound after delinquencies. The amount of time it takes to do so varies depending on the length of your credit history and many other factors. But while these risk factors call for patience, they also suggest getting proactive about making sure you never miss another payment again.\n*   **\"Collection\" or \"Accounts in collection\"**: If you see \"collection\" in a risk factor, it means you've allowed a bill to go unpaid so long that a creditor has turned it over to their collections department or a third-party collection agency. That's not good for your credit score, and it's not good for your peace of mind, since collection agents can be relentless in pursuit of payment and will likely bombard you with mail, voicemail and electronic communications in hopes you'll pay what you owe.  \n    A collections entry remains on your credit report for seven years from the date of the first missed payment that led to the collections action. These entries hurt your credit score most when they're new, and their impact on your score diminishes over time. There's nothing you can do to get a legitimate collections entry removed from your credit report, and debt collectors are not obligated to remove a collection that's been paid. Paying the debt will get the collection entry updated to reflect that, and a paid collection may do less damage than an unpaid one. In fact, some scores exclude paid collections from the calculation, so paying it off could help your scores almost immediately.\n*   **\"Too few\"**: This phrase in a risk factor, when made in reference to different types of credit accounts (revolving accounts or installment accounts, for instance) can be an indication that your credit score would benefit from an improved credit mix—a greater number and variety of loan and credit types.  \n    It's never a good idea to take on extra debt you can't handle, but if and when it makes sense for you to do so, taking out a car loan or opening an additional credit card account might improve your score depending on how you manage it. END