Congrats Jason.
Quote:
The key to maintaining and improving credit comes from six main factors. These factors are:
Payment History
Length of time accounts have been established
Keeping your balances below 50% of the limit
Having little unsecured debt
Having low outstanding balances
Number of Tradelines
We'll examine them a bit further
Payment History
This is by far and large the most important factor, and one of the biggest contributors to either helping or damaging your credit rating. Having a flawless or near flawless payment history is the best way to keep excellent credit. Payments are reported late only if they are 30+ days delinquent. Not that I would recommend it, but that means you could be 20 days late every month on your credit card payments and still have perfect payment history - although I would imagine you would be paying quite a sum in fees and interest.
Length of Time Accounts have been established
The longer accounts have been open, the better it will reflect on you. A credit history of 10+ years is very, very good.
Keeping your balances below 50% of the limit
This is important because the CRAs keep track of the highest balance you have ever carried on your revolving credit - aka credit cards or other revolving lines. Fortunately, however, if you were near or over your limit, the more time that passes the less it affects your score. If you recently went near/over your limit, a quick fix to this is to simply increase your credit limit and don't every go above your previous high balance.
Having little unsecured debt
The less unsecured debt you have the better off you are going to be. Unsecured debt is basically debt that you have that does not have any collateral attached to it - the most common unsecured debt is credit card debt, although there are other unsecured products out there.
Having low outstanding balances
Basically, this is regarding your total debt. Mortgages don't seem to have a whole lot of effect on this, but credit cards, vehicle loans, and other installments loans do play a role in this total. The less the debt, the better the credit
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PLEASE - NoSoup is THE MAN when it comes to advice on
credit and lending. Take a look at the great resource that he's made for folks like you and me.