 TITLE: How Long Does It Take to Rebuild Credit? CONTENT: What Factors Influence Your Credit Score?\n-----------------------------------------\nCredit scoring factors are generally broken up into five categories, with several attributes per category.\n*   **Payment history**: Making on-time payments can help your credit, while missing payments can hurt it. The later your payments get, the more they can impact your credit. Other payment-related negative marks go into this category as well, such as whether you have a charged-off account or have filed for bankruptcy.\n*   **Current debts**: Your current debt amount relative to your initial loan amount can impact your credit. However, what's most important in this category is the amount of revolving credit you're using—your credit utilization ratio. Using a relatively small percentage (under 30%, but lower is better) of your credit cards' limits is better than carrying high balances that approach your credit limits. If you can, also pay your bill in full each month to avoid paying interest.\n*   **The length of your credit history**: A long history of managing credit accounts can help your credit scores. The ages of your oldest and newest accounts, and the average age of all your accounts, are all scoring factors.\n*   **Experience with different types of accounts**: Having revolving credit (such as credit card) and installment credit (such as auto, student or mortgage) accounts in your credit report could be better than only having one type of account.\n*   **Recent credit applications**: Applying for new credit accounts can have an effect on your credit.\nPayment history and current debts—primarily your revolving utilization rate—are generally the biggest factors affecting credit scores. However, being knowledgeable about and mindful of all the factors can be important when you're rebuilding your credit. END