What Determines Your Credit Score?
Your overall credit score is determined, by percentage, by these crucial factors:
As you can see, the most important factor is PAYING ON TIME. In fact, paying early (BCG highly recommends paying 15 days before stated due date) can carry extra weight.
After timely payments, your next priority is to ensure that your debt to credit available ratio is about 4:1. In other words, if you have $10,000 in available credit, try not to have more than $2,500 in debt. By keeping this at or below this ratio, you will improve your credit scores.
Below is a table showing a sampling of possible different score ranges and how they can affect a mortgage payment:
| Score Range | Rating | % of US Population | Extra Cost Per month for a 200K Loan |
| 780+ | Perfect | 20 | $0 |
| 720-780 | Excellent | 20 | $0 |
| 675-720 | Average | 20 | $86 |
| 620-690 | Fair | 20 | $242 |
| Below 620 | Low | 20 | $353 |
