The 5 credit score factors

FICO publishes the general weight of each category for the general population (FICO). Your own mix may weigh differently.

• Payment history (about 35%): whether you've paid on time, and any late payments, collections, or bankruptcies.
• Amounts owed (about 30%): balances, especially revolving utilization.
• Length of credit history (about 15%): age of your oldest, newest, and average accounts.
• New credit (about 10%): recently opened accounts and hard inquiries.
• Credit mix (about 10%): having different types, like revolving and installment credit.

The biggest factor. Late payments are generally reported once they're 30 or more days past due, and how late, how recent, and how many all matter. Most negative items can be reported for up to 7 years (how long items stay). If a late is wrong, dispute it. If it's accurate, the best fix is a long run of on-time months. Autopay for at least the minimum is the simplest protection.

This looks at how much you owe, especially on revolving accounts relative to their limits. Models consider both overall utilization and individual cards. Because issuers usually report statement balances, paying down before the statement date can lower what's reported. Use the utilization calculator to find the dollars needed to reach a target.

Older accounts in good standing help. Opening several new accounts lowers your average age. Closing old accounts doesn't remove them immediately, but it can raise utilization by removing their limits. This factor rewards patience.

Opening several accounts in a short period can signal risk. Each application usually creates a hard inquiry; FICO generally counts inquiries from the past 12 months, and rate shopping for a mortgage, auto, or student loan within a short window is generally treated as one inquiry (FICO).

Having experience with both revolving accounts (cards) and installment loans (auto, student, mortgage, credit-builder) can help slightly. It's not a reason to take on debt you don't need.

Knowing what's left out is as useful as knowing what's in. FICO says its scores don't consider (FICO):

• Race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, receipt of public assistance, or your exercise of consumer credit rights. Federal law prohibits credit scoring from considering these.
• Your age.
• Your salary, occupation, employer, or employment history. Lenders may still ask about these separately.
• Where you live, or the interest rates on your accounts.
• Inquiries you make to check your own credit, promotional inquiries for prescreened offers, account reviews by your existing lenders, and inquiries marked as coming from employers.
• Non-bankruptcy public records, which no longer appear on reports from the nationwide bureaus, and anything not in your credit report.
• Whether you're getting help from a credit or debt advice service.

When a score is disclosed to you, it comes with "key factors" (sometimes called reason codes): short statements like "proportion of balances to credit limits is too high" or "too many recent inquiries." Federal law caps the number of key factors in a score disclosure at four, and requires inquiries to be added as an extra factor if they hurt your score but didn't make the top four (15 U.S.C. § 1681g(f)).

Each key factor maps to one of the five categories above. Read them as a personalized priority list: if the top reason is utilization, that's where your effort goes first. If it's delinquency, look for late payments that may be reported in error before anything else.

The categories overlap in real life. Opening a new card adds a hard inquiry and a new account (new credit), lowers your average account age (length of history), and adds available credit that can lower utilization (amounts owed), all at once. Closing an old card does the reverse on available credit and can raise utilization, while its history may remain on your report for years. A late payment hits payment history directly, and if fees and interest pile up, it can raise your balance too.

That's why simple, steady habits beat clever tactics: pay on time, keep balances low, apply only when you need credit, and let accounts age.

• "You need to carry a balance." No. Paying in full every month avoids interest, and the statement balance still reports, so on-time history and utilization are recorded either way.
• "Checking your score hurts it." Checking your own credit is a soft inquiry and doesn't count.
• "Closing a card erases its history." A closed account can remain on your report for years; the bigger effect of closing is usually the lost limit.
• "Paying a collection wipes it out." Paid collections usually show a $0 balance rather than disappearing. Some newer scoring models ignore paid collections, but older ones still in use may not. See collections and charge-offs.

Utilization can change as soon as new balances are reported, often monthly. Payment history and account age build slowly. A single late payment can have a lasting effect, which is why autopay for at least the minimum is worth setting up. And if anything on your report is inaccurate, correcting it is the one change that can address the past; see how to dispute errors.