THE MVET WAY CEMN NEWSLETTER...JULY-AUGUST-2016-ISSUE-1

Boost Your Credit Score in 2016 By Craig Buchan, M.A.

Part 1 of 3 I focus on cutting debt, building savings, and banks behaving badly. Have you resolved to improve your credit score in 2016? We might dislike FICO, but the financial system still largely depends on upon those three digits. If your goal is a higher credit score, here are five tips to help you get there. Tip #1: Bring, and keep, your open accounts current. The most important part of your FICO score is a history of on-time payments. If an account becomes 30 days past due, you can lose a lot of points. It is much more important to bring and keep open accounts current than to handle old collection items of closed accounts. Tip #2: Reduce your credit card utilization. Utilization is defined as the percentage of your available credit that you are using. To calculate your utilization, divide your statement balances by your credit limits. If you have $10,000 of available credit and have a $1,000 balance, your utilization rate is 10%. According to data from Experian Decision Analytics , people with the best credit scores (above 780) have a utilization rate of 5.6%. How are you managing your accounts? What is your utilization rate?

Part 2 will continue with tips to boost your credit score.