Clean up your credit score

From buying insurance to getting a mortgage, your credit score is your financial DNA. Here are some do’s and dont’s of establishing good credit.

1) Forget retail credit cards
Every time you open an account with a store to get that 10 percent discount, you are giving the retail lender the ability to pull your credit. And that can lower your credit score. This is especially damaging if you’ve only handled credit for a limited time.

2) Pay more than the minimum
Paying your bills on time is about one-third of your FICO score. Concentrate not only on paying on time, but paying more than the minimum payments.

3) Don’t close credit card accountsYour score takes into account the difference between what credit you have available to you and what you’re using. If you shut down credit card account, the total amount of your available credit is lowered and your balances look much larger in comparison. This ratio then hurts your score.

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