There are five pieces of information the credit bureaus use when calculating your score. Here is the list and the approximate value they carry into the bureaus scoring model.

1. Payment History (45%)

This is where the bureaus will weight negative credit items from your report. It will help to improve your score if you can clean your credit from negative items.

However even if you have bad credit listed here, if the account is more than 4 years old it will not be weighted as heavily. In addition having positive payment history here will reduce the impact bad credit items have.

2. Available Credit to Debt (30%)

This is how much credit do you have that is available. Are all your credit cards maxed out?

The bureaus like to see available credit. This shows them that you are a responsible user of credit.

3. Length of Credit (5%)

How long have you been using credit? If you are a newbie to the world of credit you can still have a good score.

You should not worry about this aspect when it comes to improving your score. Your accounts will age naturally and this will not make or break your score.

4. Credit Experience (5%)

What sort of accounts on your credit do you have. Do you only have an auto loan?

The bureaus like to see diverse accounts. However this is such a small piece of your score that it is not worth opening up new accounts to show this.

With time your accounts will become diverse. You will have an auto loan, credit card, boat loan and  etcetera.

5. Pursuit of New Credit (15%)

How often is your credit being checked? Are you frequently having your credit run?

If it looks like your credit is being checked continuously it will lower your credit score. The bureaus expect to see credit inquiries but excessive inquires will damage your score.

There are people that try and make purchases with their credit every month. For those their score is going to be lowered because of that.

These weight values are just estimates and not exact. Each bureau varies their scoring model and they choose to keep this information secret from the public. However by building positive payment history and removing negative accounts from your credit report you can increase your credit score dramatically.

For more tips to improve credit score or to read an article about a how to remove a civil judgment from your credit report or for more online credit repair tips visit us.