10 Best Ways to Raise Your Credit Score

There are three major credit bureaus -- Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion -- that play a huge role in determining the availability and cost of consumer loans for everything from low credit limit credit cards to jumbo mortgages. You need to keep up with what their reports say about you.

They use your payment history to determine your creditworthiness, giving you a score that goes a long way toward determining how much you can borrow and how much interest you'll pay for the credit you get.

A major kind of credit score is the FICO score, which ranges from 350 to 850. It’s a brand so widely used that it’s become synonymous with "credit score," but there are other brands, too. The bottom line is that most people need good credit to afford life in these here United States, and here are some best practices around how to improve yours.

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