How do you pay monthly credit card, automobile payments, house payments or loan payments?  - These are very important questions and if you don't know the answers, your credit score may be lower than necessary. If you save bills and pay them once a month, some of your credit accounts may be showing late payments, which can seriously affect your credit scores. If your monthly account are received in the mail on the 5th, 15th and 25th of the month and you collect all of them and pay once a month on the 30th of each month, thinking that you are paying all of your accounts timely, you may be getting late payments posted to your credit report. The important date is not the date you receive the bill, or the date you pay the bill. The important date is the date on which your payment is POSTED.

If you mail a bill on the 1st of the month that was received on the 5th of the preceding month, while technically, you are paying within 30 days, by the time the credit card company receives your payment and gets it posted to your account, that payment may not be posted until the 6th to the 10th of the month, making your payment late. The due date is important, but the payment much be POSTED in time to be credited before the due date. Be careful. The best solution is to pay bills when they are received or certainly no less than twice monthly.

How much credit is available to you?
How much of the credit that is available to you are you actually using? - If you have three credit cards with credit limits of $3,000, $10,000 and $15,000, you have three separate categories of credit available. You have a total available credit of $28,000 available to you . If you carry combined balances of $25,000, you are using 89% of your available credit. That may result in a slightly lower credit score than would be possible than if you used less of your available credit. If you carried credit card balances of $8,000, you would be using 29% of your available credit. Amount of available credit used on a regular basis is one of the things that affect your credit scores. On the other hand, if you have a lot of available credit, you might consider closing one or two credit card accounts. Mortgage companies see that you have more credit available to you than you normally use and may see risk with available credit at your fingertips.

What difference does my credit score make? - Your credit score will determine how much interest you will pay on your new home mortgage loan. A high credit score will translate into a lower interest rate and that will permit you to qualify for a higher loan limit. Lower interest is directly translated into more home for your money.

Solution: Pay bills earlier rather than later.  Keep credit cards that you need, not what you can qualify for.