Credit Score
You may remember working on your SAT scores in high school. The results on each section of these college board admissions exams ranged from a low of 200 to a perfect high of 800. Like the Educational Testing Service of Princeton, New Jersey, the Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO) of Minneapolis, Minnesota has a number assigned to each of us, but following us through the rest of our lives. Your credit score is a numerical measure of your creditworthiness. The FICO scale ranges from a low 300 to a high 850. The higher your score, the more financial options you have available to you.
Our payments toward debts we owe and the credit we take out affects our credit score. What does not get factored in would be our work, income, banking and household expenses. Since you are entitled to a free credit report from each of the three bureaus every year, you may wish to regularly keep up with your credit history by pulling a different report every four months without having to sign up for the “free” credit reporting services. Reviewing your report can allow you to correct and improve the information that is there, sort of like practice for standardized testing.
