There are a number of factors that affect your credit report. You need to be aware of these factors else you might end up ruining your credit. Even a single delay in a payment can cause your credit score to dip.

1. Payment History: Your payment history is the most important factor of your credit report. Almost 35% of your score depends on the payment history. You need to make sure that you make your payments on time and pay the premiums and insurances regularly else it might affect your credit score to the maximum. Make sure that you do not close your old accounts, simply because old accounts make your credit history lengthy and a good credit history is always a positive. Closing old accounts also reduce your overall credit limit. Hence be careful while closing old accounts. Do not close all old credit accounts at once.
2. Debts: The amount you have borrowed compared to your available credit forms a major part of your credit report. This factor contributes to around 30% of your credit score. It is calculated on an overall basis and an individual account basis. Experts recommend that you do not borrow more than 35% of your available balances. Thus you should not try to shed off any extra credit cards that you may possess
3. Inquiries: Inquiries go down as a negative in your credit report. New debt accounts and inquiries form around 10% of your credit score. However if you are looking to purchase a house, all the mortgage inquiries within thirty days of each other are considered as a single inquiry. Similarly collection accounts are also a stigma on your credit report. They reduce your trustworthiness to your future creditors. Collection agencies knock your door when one or more of your creditors have informed them about the excess delay in payments.
4. Type of debt: Around 10% of your credit score also depends on the type of credit. Installment debt like an auto loan is viewed more favorably as compared to revolving (credit card) debt. The changes made in 2009 offers you points to manage various kinds of debts (mortgage, auto loan, credit cards) successfully.

The above mentioned factors affect your credit score the most. However you also need to guard your finances against ID theft. Many people have ended up ruining their credits because of identity theft. At times people were not even aware of such a theft until unexpected letters and irrelevant bills started to pour into their mailboxes. In order to safeguard yourself against ID theft you need to make sure that you check your credit report regularly. Once a year you can get your annual credit report for free from one of the three major credit reporting bureaus, Equifax, Experian and Transunion.

ReliaCredit provides you view of your annual credit report free credit report with Identity Guard and also Credit check

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/credit-articles/factors-affecting-your-credit-1011686.html

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Tags: Account Basis, Auto Loan, Collection Accounts, Collection Agencies, Credit Accounts, credit card debt, Credit History, Credit Report, Credit Score, Creditors, Debt Accounts, Extra Credit, Installment Debt, Insurances, Payment History, Premiums, Revolving Credit, Stigma, Thirty Days, Trustworthiness

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 5th, 2009 at 3:08 am and is filed under Protection From Identity Theft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.