Your personal credit rating is determined by your spending habits, your reliability with paying your bills, and how much debt you have overall.¹

Not everyone is going to have great credit. And that's OK. We understand that your credit history may not be perfect². Just know that if you keep up with your payments and honor your lease or financing agreements, you'll be adding to your credit history.

What is your credit made of?

There are a few factors that make up someone's credit:

Credit Report

A credit report is issued by an independent credit reporting agency and includes personal information; credit information like accounts, dates opened, account numbers, terms, amounts borrowed and payment history; how many creditors have requested your credit report; and public records of tax liens, bankruptcies and court-awarded judgments.

Credit reports are generated by each of the three major credit-reporting bureaus: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. What is reflected in your credit report may be used to compute your credit score.

Credit Score

Your credit score, sometimes referred to as a FICO score, can range from 300-850. The higher it is, the better. Good credit scores can make it easier and cheaper to get credit for the things you want. Basically, the scores have become a way to see how an individual's credit compares to hundreds of thousands of other consumers, and are used by financial institutions to decide how likely you are to honor your financial commitments.

Actually, you have more than one credit score. Each of the three bureaus uses a different score for its own purposes, and they're not all the same for each person. These scores will also fluctuate from time to time, and may differ based on how each bureau calculates scores based on its stated criteria. To keep your credit in good standing it's important to be proactive.