What Doesn’t Affect a Credit Score?

There are a multitude of factors that affect and determine your credit score. However, there are a great many things that don’t affect your credit score.

Doesn't Affect Credit ScoreContrary to popular belief, you can impact your credit score both positively and negatively. You can achieve a higher credit score if you understand the criteria for how you are being scored. But before we look at how you are scored, let’s look at what doesn’t affect your credit score. Knowing what doesn’t affect your credit score helps you focus on what does.

Credit scoring algorithms can focus only on the facts related to credit risk. Credit scores consider a wide range of information and all of that information is obtained from your credit report. As such, credit scores do not consider the following:

  • Your age, race, color, national origin, religion, gender, and marital status
  • Your education, income, occupation, title, date of employment, and employment history
  • Your place of residence or duration of residency
  • Your rental history, unless you’ve been evicted or didn’t pay your rent and the account goes to collection or a judgment was awarded
  • Late payments made on credit cards, auto loans, mortgages, and child support after the due date, but less than 30 days past the due date
  • Late utility payments such as gas & electric, water, mobile phone and landlines, cable, satellite, etc… unless the account goes to collection
  • Bounced checks, unless a payee sends the account to collection
  • Inquiries into your credit made by 1) you, 2) an employer, 3) a creditor you currently have an account with, and 4) offers of “pre-approved” credit

Your credit score is something you should manage on a proactive basis. Improving your credit score can help you:

  • Get better credit offers
  • Lower your interest rates
  • Speed up credit approvals

Hopefully, you have a better understanding of what a credit score is. For more information on credit and credit scoring download our FREE report entitled “Credit Scoring and Wealth – The Game of Credit.”

I will cover what does affect a credit score in another post so be sure to check back.

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