Your FICO score is the same as your credit score (FICO is short for Fair Isaac Corporation). Your score is based on information about you from companies that gave you credit in the past. In this article, we provide some free tips for people with low FICO scores.
The first challenge is to determine if your credit score is considered low. FICO scores range from 300 to a perfect 850. Anything under 700 could stand a some improvement. After all, your credit score determines how high an interest you’ll pay on your loans, credit card balances, and your home mortgage. The higher your score, the lower the interest rates you’ll be offered.
Free tip #1. Monitor your credit report. You can get a free copy of your credit report every 12 months (go to annualcreditreport.com). But since there are three major credit reporting bureaus (Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax), if you request a report from one of them every four months, you will be able to monitor your reports over the course of a full year. The purpose of monitoring your credit reports is to look for any inaccurate information and then work with the credit bureaus to get it removed. Read more