Monitoring your credit score is an easy way to stay in touch with your finances, think of it as having a scale in your bathroom, not only does it provide you with information about yourself, but it also can give an incentive to get off your butt and start working on it. Credit Karma doesn’t just give you your credit score, but it also breaks down your Credit factors for you.
Here are the 6 credit factors Credit Karma looks at to improve your score:
- Credit Card Utilization: the percentage of your used credit over your available credit;
- Derogatory marks: missed payments, late fees…;
- Total accounts open: track your credit cards and loans;
- Payment History: Amount of payments over total payments;
- Age of credit history: among all your open lines of credit; and
- Hard Inquiries: see my article, “If your credit score is below 700, here are 5 things….”
HERE IS THE TAKEAWAY: Credit Karma will give you up-to-date information (usually weekly) on what you can do to increase your score using your Credit Factors. Work on these individual factors to raise your score in the long run.
