Discover how credit scores and credit reports differ, why each is important, and how they impact your financial life.

Discover how pre-approved credit offers affect your credit score, including the difference between soft and hard inquiries and their impact on your financial health.

Lindsay VanSomeren is a personal finance writer based out of Kirkland, Washington. Her work has appeared on Business Insider, Credit Karma, LendingTree, and more. Lindsay VanSomeren is a personal ...

Thinking about renting a home, taking out car finance, applying for a mortgage or getting a credit card? If so, be prepared for lenders to take a close look at your credit score. This important score ...

Perfect credit, or even really good credit, opens doors for American consumers. Better interest rates on loans. Better odds of renting an apartment or landing a job. Lower insurance premiums. But how ...

Some people aren’t kind about credit scores. Comments on the social media platform Reddit range from jabs calling them “useless” or “ridiculous” to stronger scoldings saying they’re a “gimmick” or ...

Many or all of the products here are from our partners that compensate us. It’s how we make money. But our editorial integrity ensures that our product ratings are not influenced by compensation. Ever ...

Credit builder cards are designed to help kick off – or grow – a credit score. This is the measure lenders use when deciding whether or not to grant a loan or credit card, and at what interest rate.

I've seen folks raise their scores by 50+ points in just a few months, without doing anything fancy. They just learned which factors affected their score most, and focused on improving those areas.