Have you ever wondered how the credit bureaus calculate your credit scrore? Or what factors determine an "excellent" credit history rather than a "poor" one? The truth is that nobody knows how credit is calculated. Anyone that tells you differently is lying to you! The credit bureaus refuse to tell anyone, including the government, exactly how they calculate a credit score. There is also no good answer why you can pay to get your score online, but when a mortgage company or car dealership pull your credit, the score is completely different. Recently the credit bureaus have come out with some general categories of what positively and negatively affect your score.

Some of the things which positively affect credit history:

• timely payments
• long history of good payments
• low balances when compared to their limits
• not too many open accounts with available balances.

Some of the things which negatively affect credit history:

• collection accounts
• foreclosures
• bankruptcies
• delinquent child support payments
• judgements
• late payment history.

Everything we know about how credit scores are calculated is simply from looking at tens of thousands of credit reports.