Credit inquiries, which are required anytime you open new credit cards, account for about a tenth of your credit score. Anytime a potential lender requests your credit score, your score will drop a point or two, assuming you have strong credit. Lots of inquiries within a one-year timeframe will hurt your score by more than [...]
The length of time you have had credit—which includes the age of credit cards on your credit report—is a big factor in determining your credit score, accounting for 15 percent of your credit score. The older your accounts, the better your score.
This component considers not only the age of individual credit cards, but also the [...]
Your credit card payment history is a big part of your credit card score and your overall credit score.
Your payment history on all your debt obligations (such as a mortgage, your credit cards, and your auto loan) accounts for 35 percent of your credit score, which makes it the most important factor in determining your [...]
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Tags: credit card payment history, credit card score, Philip Tirone 
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With 30 percent of your credit score linked to the amount of money you owe, one of the most important determinants of your credit score is your utilization rate, which considers your credit card balances as a percentage of your credit card limits. Learning about utilization rates, as well as how to maintain the [...]
Question: “I receive a lot of credit card offers in the mail, and I am wondering how many credit cards should I have?”
Answer: Ideally, you should have between three and five revolving credit accounts, and they should all be major credit cards such as Visa, American Express, MasterCard, or Discover. (Ideally, you would not have [...]
Credit cards—including Visa, American Express, MasterCard, and Discover, as well as retail credit cards—are an ingrained part of our lives. Used wisely, they allow us to finance luxuries, trips, appliances, and emergencies. But without proper knowledge of the credit scoring systems, credit cards can lead to misfortune, debt, and poor credit. And what you may [...]
A “credit card score” is a letter grade that reflects whether your credit card habits are helping you build credit or causing you to have bad credit: An “A” credit card score is excellent; an “F” indicates that you likely have bad credit. The lower your credit card score, the more likely you have bad credit and need to make immediate changes to your credit card behavior.
How many credit cards do you have? How high is your balance? Do you pay your bills on time and in full? All of these factors are used to determine your credit card score.
Do you have good credit or bad credit? Take the quiz: What is my credit card score?
