 TITLE: Does Your Income Appear on Your Credit Reports? CONTENT: Does Income Affect Credit Score?\n--------------------------------\nYour credit scores are calculated using information in your credit report and don't consider your income as a factor. The factors that do influence your credit score include:\n*   **Payment history**: Timely payments help improve your credit score; late and missed payments can hurt your score significantly.\n*   **Credit usage**: The percentage of available credit you're using on your credit cards, also known as utilization rate, has considerable influence on credit scores. Rates greater than 30% can do serious damage to your score, but in general, the lower, the better.\n*   **New credit accounts**: Credit checks associated with credit applications and opening of new loan or credit accounts can temporarily reduce your credit score, though scores tend to rebound within a few months as long as you keep up with your debt payments.\n*   **Length of credit history**: This factor considers how long you've been managing and repaying debts. A longer credit history is seen as a mark of experience with credit management. All other factors being equal, a longer credit history tends to lead to a higher credit score.\n*   **Credit mix:** This is the number and variety of loans and credit accounts you have. Lenders view a combination of credit accounts as a sign you can handle credit well, so a varied credit mix tends to promote higher credit scores.\nBecause income is not found in your credit report, it cannot influence your credit scores directly. A reduction in income can, however, affect credit scores indirectly if it causes you to fall behind on debt payments, drive up your credit card balances or take on new debt. By the same token, an increase in income could make it easier for you to afford additional credit, but won't affect your credit score unless you use your new income to address the factors that affect your score directly.\nA loss or drop in income may also affect your ability to qualify for new loans or credit, since lenders typically look at debt-to-income (DTI) ratio—the percentage of your monthly income required to pay your monthly debts—when evaluating your creditworthiness. A reduction in income increases DTI ratio, and could make you ineligible for certain types of credit. END