How to Improve Your Credit Score Your credit score follows you everywhere that you go affecting the most important of financial decisions. In a perfect world, we would all have great credit and have no barriers when making big purchases like buying a car or a new home. However, that isn’t the case for everyone. It isn’t the end of the world though. If a home purchase is in your future, you should start now in Your credit score, also called a FICO score, is a simplified calculation of your history of paying back debts and making regular payments on loans. If you're borrowing money to buy a home, lenders want to be assured that you'll pay them back as agreed in the mortgage agreement. Your credit score and accompanying reports will be the primary basis for their decision. Your credit score will determine whether you qualify for a mortgage, the amount of money you qualify for in a mortgage, and even the interest rat you receive. On a 30 year mortgage e...