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What Does Credit Score?

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Five hundred and thirty-six. That number could represent the amount someone has in their bank account, or maybe a number of licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie roll lollipop, but if that number represents an individual’s credit score then they have an extensive and tedious road ahead of them. Credit scores have an uncanny ability to alter the way professionals view an individual in a professional environment, deny hardworking individuals from bettering their circumstances, and mainly hold a negative affect towards lower income individuals. A credit score is the utmost important number a person has because this one number determines how a person lives each day and is the last legal form of discrimination in America. What exactly goes into a credit score? Unfortunately, many consumers cannot answer this question. Credit scores are not easily accessible and therefore this lack or knowledge negatively affects individuals because they do not know how to better their score. A credit score is composed of five different components: thirty percent is the amount a person owes, thirty-five percent is payment history, fifteen percent is the length of credit history, ten percent is new credit, and the remaining ten percent is called a credit mix. One study of individual’s knowledge of credit showed, “that while most respondents knew what a credit score was ‘in theory,’ their practical knowledge of credit scores was lacking. Knowledge of the factors that positively and

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