Payment history is by far the most important factor in determining your credit score. 35 percent of your score will be based on this factor. Meeting your debt payments in a timely manner will help your score. Making late payments will do the opposite. Lawsuits, judgments and tax liens are killers. Also, the size of the payment is taken into account. When in doubt, pay higher debt obligations before lower ones. The balance on your debt obligations is another significant factor in your score. In a perfect world, you want to have a lot of credit available without actually owing any money. Since this is not a perfect world, you should try to keep the total amount you owe below thirty percent of the total credit available. If you have twenty thousands in available credit, you want to actually owe less than six thousand. This factor accounts for 30 percent of your credit score.

When you sign up for a credit monitoring service, you get your FICO score for free. There is a trial period (most of the programs have 30 days trial), and you can access your FICO score anytime during this period. After the trial period ends, the service will automatically start charging your credit card unless you cancel the service.

Credit monitoring programs, depending on the package you sign up for, allow you to pull your credit report/s and get your free fico score, be informed immediately if there are any changes and/or suspicious activity on your report, and gain access to online tools that are available only to credit monitoring clients. For instance, some packages allow you to simulate how your credit rating score would be affected if you were to take a particular action. Another package sends you an email to remind you when a bill is due for payment.

The type of credit is also a facto in your FICO score, accounting for about ten percent. Credit cards are okay, but lenders like to see more formal obligations. This can be a car loan, student loan or previous mortgage. If you have a history with non-credit card debt, it is vital that you met every monthly payment obligation on the debt. Inquiries also are factored into your FICO score, to the tune of ten percent. A lender is looking at inquiries over a 6 month period. Each one you initiated by applying for credit can ding your score, so make sure to avoid applying for credit for six months before seeking a mortgage.