The "Score Impact" for your Credit Factors indicates how much influence each factor has on your overall credit score. Here's a breakdown of what the different impact levels mean:
- High Impact:
- These factors have the strongest influence on your credit score.
- Typically includes payment history (~35% of your score) and credit utilization (~30% of your score).
- Derogatory marks like bankruptcies, collections, or judgments also fall into this category.
- Focusing on improving these factors can lead to the most significant improvements in your credit score.
- Medium Impact:
- These factors have a moderate influence on your credit score.
- Usually includes the length of your credit history (~15% of your score).
- Improvements in these areas can help boost your score, but not as dramatically as high-impact factors.
- Low Impact:
- These factors have the least influence on your credit score, but are still important.
- Typically includes credit mix and new credit inquiries (each ~10% of your score).
- While changes in these areas may not cause major fluctuations in your score, they can still make a difference, especially if you're close to a higher score bracket.
Understanding these impact levels can help you prioritize which areas to focus on when trying to improve your credit score. For instance, ensuring on-time payments and keeping your credit utilization low (high-impact factors) should be your primary focus, while managing the number of new credit applications (a low-impact factor) is still important but less critical.