What Is a Credit Score?
Your credit score is a report card for how you handle borrowed money.
The idea
A credit score is a number, usually somewhere between 300 and 850, that says how reliably you pay back money you borrowed. The biggest thing that moves it is payment history: paying on time lifts it, paying late drops it. The second big thing is credit utilization, which is how much of your available limit you are actually using. It matters later because landlords, lenders, and sometimes insurers look at it when they decide whether to say yes to you. 📊
Words to know
- Credit
- Money someone lets you borrow now that you promise to pay back later.
- Credit score
- A number that shows how reliably you pay borrowed money back.
- Payment history
- The record of whether you paid your bills on time or late.
- Credit utilization
- How much of the money you are allowed to borrow you are actually using right now.
- Credit report
- The list of your loans and payments that the score is built from.
Try it — no account needed
A credit score is a number that tells lenders how likely you are to pay money back. Swipe true or false.
Paying every bill on time is the biggest thing that lifts a credit score.
In the full lesson
- 1True or false
- 2Work out the number
- 3Make the call
Vine has 107 lessons like this one, each written three ways so a 7-year-old and a 17-year-old both get a version that fits.
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