One thing you can and must do to improve your credit score

Paying your bills on time is the single most important thing you can do to improve your credit score. Your payment credit history is weighted as 35% of your credit score. A single credit card payment that is reported to the credit bureaus more than 30 days late can lower your credit score by 100 points. The negative effect of a late payment declines with time but it can take years before becoming insignificant without your intervention.

Foreclosures, bankruptcies, tax liens, and charge-offs reported to the credit agencies also have a negative affect on your credit score. In most cases these kinds of things occur beyond your control. Although you were not able to prevent the negative impact on your credit score at the time there may be things you can do now to get them off your credit report and out of your credit score calculation. We cover how to do that later on.