 TITLE: How to Improve Your Payment History CONTENT: Non-Debt Payments (Usually) Don't Affect Payment History\n--------------------------------------------------------\nPayments for expenses unrelated to borrowing money such as rent, utility and cellphone bills, don't automatically influence your credit standing the way debt payments do, but they can affect your credit scores as well:\n*   Few landlords and property managers do so, but they can report rent payments to the national credit bureaus—and if they do, rent payments may be incorporated into your payment history. Recent versions of the FICO® Score and VantageScore® scoring models are designed to consider rent payments if they appear in your credit reports.\n*   If any bill you fail to pay is turned over to a collection agency, a collection account will appear on your credit report and will adversely affect your credit scores.\n*   Enrolling in Experian Boost™† for free can incorporate your history of utility, cellphone and streaming service payments into your Experian credit report, and a record of on-time payments can increase your FICO® Scores based on Experian data. END