Credit Score: The Myths and Realities

There is tons of wrong information available in the market explaining what should be done and what should not be done in order to have a good credit score. Listening to these sources can harm you to a large extent. You may end up losing money or find a big loan slipping away from you if you concentrate on these myths.

Here are a few credit score myths which are common in the market:

  • Regular Monitoring Of Your Credit Report Can Damage Your Credit Score: Regular checking of your credit report actually helps you to keep it error free. Any mistake in your report can harm your credit score; therefore regular monitoring is advisable for your credit score. This kind of monitoring is a soft inquiry which has nothing to do with your credit score.

Man and woman using credit card to purchase product online

  • Closing Your Old Accounts Will Bring You Credit Score: This is also considered to be one of the influential credit score myths. Your old account indicates your long credit history which is actually an added advantage for your credit score. It signifies your stability. So closing your old accounts can never be beneficial for you.
  • Having Too Many Credit Cards Can Harm Your Credit Score: This is one of the common credit score myths which affect people in a number of ways. The fear of losing credit scores make them close some of their accounts which actually results in losing some credit scores. Very frequent closing and opening of accounts and not using the cards for a long period of time can be harmful to some extent but using them with proper guidelines can actually bring you high credit scores.
  • Nothing Can Be Done With A Previous Late Payment: People use to posses this notion that if you had a late payment you can not do anything to remove that from your credit report. But it is not that difficult. It can easily be done with the help of your credit card company. By removing this kind of negative elements from your report, you can gain high credit score
  • Credit Counseling Can Be Harmful to You: Most of the people think that credit counseling might have some negative impact on their credit score. But the recent FICO credit scoring system has nothing to do with your credit counseling.
  • You Can Not Rely On FICO Credit Score: It is another influential credit score myths commonly heard in the market. People think that they need to verify more than what the FICO credit scoring system says. Sometime, the three major credit reporting bureaus gather data from different sources. So, the scores may not be same in all these three reports but there is nothing you need to check more than FICO credit scoring system.

There are so many credit score myths you will be facing everyday. But it depends on your intelligence how you can keep yourself safe from getting harmed by these myths.

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