What’s Your Credit Score?

STACKS Magazine has provided detailed information and helpful resources for our readers when it comes to their personal finances. Our “Your Money and You” series went in-depth with beneficial information that should have helped you tackle debt management and saving.

Now we’re going to step into another realm of attaining financial success, and that area is called Credit.

According to Wikipedia, Credit is the provision of resources (such as granting a loan) by one party to another party where that second party does not reimburse the first party immediately, thereby generating a debt, and instead arranges either to repay or return those resources (or material(s) of equal value) at a later date. The first party is called a creditor, also known as a lender, while the second party is called a debtor, also known as a borrower.

In this world, where obtaining credit can be a good thing and a scary thing all at the same time, it is important to practice self-discipline. Credit is a devilish little creature that can easily invade your financial status and either ruin it or improve it. It all depends on how you handle your credit and when and where to use it properly.

But before we go to deep, let’s first look at where you stand.

FICO stands for Fair Issac & Company. FICO developed the credit score and the method behind it. FICO scoring is used only to determine the likelihood of credit users paying their bills.

To find out what your credit score is, you can obtain FREE credit reports from either of the nation’s three credit agencies: Equifax (1-800-685-1111), Trans Union (1-800-916-8800) and Experian (1-888-397-3742). Once you find out what your score is, then it’s time to determine whether you are in good standing or not. To do this, you can compare your score to the national score chart.



To start off on this journey to improve your credit score, please take a moment to fill out this FREE credit quiz through Experian/Free Credit Report.com. After you figure out where you stand, then we can move on to learning the ideals of FICO, ways to improve your score, and the right way to maintain the perfect score!