Good Money Blog

With the latest credit crunch, it now takes a higher credit score to be considered a good credit risk. For instance, if you want to go buy a car today, you need at least a credit score of 700 to get a loan. Mortgages are also hard to come by.

I hadn’t checked my FICO score for nearly two years. The last time I checked, it was something below 800. Since then, I took advantage of several 0% APR credit card balance transfers and earned some interest off the free money. In July, I finally paid everything off. As soon as I found out Equifax was giving out free credit scores to 10,000 people this week, I jumped right into it.

And… yes! Mine is 793 or great (760-850).

According to Equifax, there are four major factors affecting my score:

• Amount of Debt [ Great ]
  • The only debt I have is the credit card debt used for routine daily expenses.
• Amount of New Credit [ Very Good ]
  • There’re two inquiries from my new service providers. In the beginning of the year, I switched to cheaper service providers for my internet access (AT&T) and paid TV (DIRECTV). The easy moves have been saving me $50/month!
• Payment History [ Great ]
  • I’ve never missed a single payment. Need I say more?
• Length of Credit History [ Good ]
  • I’ve a total of 9 credit cards. They have an average of 6 years of history, and the oldest card is 8 years ago. To possibly pump up the average length, I’ve been thinking about closing/merging my newest card with another older card issued by the same bank.