 TITLE: Can I Calculate My Credit Score? CONTENT: Factors That Affect Your Credit Scores\n--------------------------------------\nFICO® Score and VantageScore calculations treat their relative importance somewhat differently, but the most critical factors that influence credit scores are the following, ranked in order of significance:\n1.  **Payment history for loans and credit cards.** This includes the number and severity of late payments. Late payments will have a greater negative effect on your credit score than any other single factor.\n2.  **Credit utilization.** The total amount of outstanding debt you have relative to your credit limits is also known as your credit utilization ratio, and it plays a major role in determining your scores. To avoid negative effects on your credit scores, experts recommend keeping outstanding balances at or below 30% of each card's borrowing limit, but the lower your utilization, the better.\n3.  **Length of credit history.** Lenders value borrowers with experience handling debt responsibly. A lengthy record of responsible credit usage (with minimal late or missed payments) tends to elevate scores more than a comparably short history of credit usage.\n4.  **Type, number and age of credit accounts.** Generally speaking, a variety of loan types (installment loans as well as revolving credit accounts, for instance) will promote higher credit scores. This \"credit mix\" also speaks to experience with credit management.\n5.  **Number of recent inquiries.** Inquiries are requests from lenders to check your credit report or credit score in connection with a loan application. Statistically speaking, applying for new credit is associated with greater risk of inability to pay bills. This factor typically only reduces credit scores by a handful of points, and its effects are typically reversed within a few months, as long as you continue to pay your bills on time.\n6.  **New credit accounts you've recently opened.** Like credit inquiries, taking on new debt (or potential debt, in the case of a credit card account) is statistically linked to risk of missing payments. And like the impact of credit inquiries, the negative effect of this factor tends to fade within a few months, as long as you keep up with all required payments.\n**Severe derogatory events.** Considered outside the scope of the everyday credit management factors listed above, bankruptcies, foreclosures and vehicle repossessions can have much more severe and lasting negative effects on your credit than any of the other considerations. Apart from causing major drops in your credit score, they signify to many lenders that you are a risky borrower, and they may impair your ability to get new loans or credit for several years. END