转载自money.cnn.com

5 Ways to Boost Your Credit Score

1. Pay your bills on time. Delinquent payments can have a major negative impact on your score and the longer you pay your bills on time, the better your score. For example, someone with an average credit rating of 707 can raise their score by as much as 20 points by paying all their bills on time for one month.

2. Keep balances low on credit cards. High outstanding debt can affect your score. Maxing out your credit cards could lower your average score by as much as 70 points.

3. Don't open a number of new credit cards that you don't need. New accounts will lower your average account age, which could actually lower your score by up to 10 points.

4. Have credit cards - but manage them responsibly. In general, having credit cards and installment loans (and making timely payments) will raise your score. Someone with no credit cards, for example, tends to be higher risk than someone who has managed credit cards responsibly.

5. Closing an account doesn't make it go away. A closed account will still show up on your credit report and may be factored into the score.

5 Ways to Kill Your Credit Score

1. Late Payments.   Since your payment history makes up 35 percent of your credit score, failing to make the minimum payment within 30 days of the due date could send your score plummeting, says Craig Watts, a spokesperson for Fair Isaac.

2. High card balances, low FICO score.  Experts say that consumers should aim to keep the balance on their credit card accounts no higher than 35 percent of their credit line.

3. Closing credit cards.  Since part of your score is based on the length of time certain lines of credit have been open, closing out that 10-year old credit card could take a bite out of your credit score.

4. Too many in-store cards.  Even if you vow to promptly pay them off, opening up several of these accounts in succession could spell trouble for your score because opening multiple lines of credit in short period of time is considered abnormal behavior by credit agencies, according to Fair Isaac, and it suggests that you might be more of a credit risk.