1. Your score will drop if you check your credit. Checking your own report and score is counted as a soft inquiry and doesn't harm your credit at all. Only hard inquiries from a lender or creditor, made when you apply for credit, can bring your credit score down a few points. However, multiple inquiries for the same purpose within a short amount of time are grouped together into a less damaging period of inquiry. 2. Closing old accounts will improve your credit score. Many people support closing old and inactive accounts as a way for improving your credit. In most cases, closing accounts will actually have the opposite effect. Canceling old credit accounts can lower your credit score by making your credit history appear shorter. Think again before closing the oldest account on your credit report. If you want to reduce your levels of available credit, ask for your credit limits to be reduced or close newer accounts instead. 3. After you pay off a negative record, it is removed from your credit report. Negative records such as collection accounts and bankruptcies will remain on your credit report for 7-10 years after they are first posted. Paying off the account before the end of the set term doesn't remove it from your credit report, but will cause the account to be marked as paid. It is still a good idea to pay your debts, but the major improvement will come when the record expires. 4. Being a co-signer doesn't make you responsible for the account. When you open a joint account, co-sign on a loan or become an authorized user on someone's credit card, you are taking on legal responsibility for the account. Any activity on these shared accounts, good or bad, will show up on both people's credit reports.. 5. Paying off a debt will add 50 points to your credit score. Your credit score is calculated using a complex algorithm that takes into account hundreds of factors and values. It is very hard to predict how many points you can gain by changing one factor. For a person with a high credit score, just one late payment can cause a significant drop. If a person has a low credit score, it may not cause a large drop at all. There is no magical way to improve your credit score, just keep paying your bills on time, reducing your debts and removing negative inaccuracies from your credit report. Good financial behavior and time are the two most important aspects on your credit score.
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