October 22nd, 2012
Credit Report Card Break-Down: Introduction
Earlier this year on the blog we presented The Ultimate Guide to Credit Karma to tell you all about Credit Karma’s features and how to best use them to monitor and improve your credit health.
We started with the Credit Report Card, which was created to help you better understand the factors influencing your credit score. Then, we realized there was a lot more to tell.
That’s why we’re starting a new series, called the Credit Report Card Break-Down. This series will cover the following items in your Credit Report Card:
This is your total credit card debt divided by your total credit limits. It’s one part of your credit score that can easily change from month to month. We’ll cover exactly what this is and how to make sure keep your utilization low.
One of the best way to build your credit is to have consistent, on-time bill payments. We’ll discuss a few strategies for making sure you don’t miss a payment.
Average Age of Open Credit Lines
The longer your credit history, the better. We’ll discuss the importance of keeping some older accounts open, and when you should decide to close them.
The total number of credit accounts definitely affects your credit score, as does your mix of credit accounts. We’ll discuss why lenders view you as a credit risk if you have too few accounts and a good strategy for opening new accounts.
These occur when you apply for credit and in some other instances. We’ll go over when a hard inquiry occurs and how to keep them to a minimum.
These are negative items on your credit report. We’ll talk about different derogatory marks and how they affect your credit, as well as how long it takes for them to fall off your report.
Total Debt and Debt-to-Income Ratio
We’ll discuss how your overall debt situation can affect your creditworthiness and how your debt-to-income ratio is sometimes used to evaluate loan applications.
Stay tuned for the first installment of the Credit Report Card Break-Down!
Have a Karmic day!
Bethy, Social Media Maven
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this web site don’t post your true credit score! i had a account paid off with an “0″ bal. and this site said it was an delinquet account, so i checked with the crediter and transunion and the report here as false!!! don’t believe what this site tell you!!!!!
Our information comes DIRECTLY from TransUnion. We don’t change or modify it at all, we simply show you what they send us. An account maybe delinquent but then remedied, meaning it won’t show on your credit report. We alert you to a delinquent status so that you can quickly take care of it BEFORE that account goes into default.