Great to have you here on the Clark Howard Show where it's about your empowerment with knowledge

so that you can save more and spend less and don't let anyone ever rip you off.

I want to welcome you to another episode of our continuing series of Back to Basics, where

it's pretty clear there are topic areas where I would give myself a C or lower and how

I explain them on the air based on my report card is when I'm out and about and somebody

asked me a question about something who is a regular listener to either our broadcast

or podcast and I realized by the questions I haven't done is good or is thorough a job

of explaining and that's why back to basics.

So what we're doing in this show is I'm going to address credit because of the areas I

am asked questions about one that I'd say I have the most difficult time explaining is

how you establish good credit what makes up a good credit score because there's so many

misperceptions.

Number one is if you think that what you earn on a job has anything to do with your credit,

forget it.

What you do for a job has nothing to do with your credit.

The factors that matter for your credit are pretty simple and how you're graded and

there aren't two that account for most everything you can really do something about.

Number one and this is with any scoring model it skews in what I'm going to tell you

but I'm going to give you the exact percent that these things matter on the traditional

most recognized scoring model and that's the FICO scoring model.

Number one accounting for 35% of what makes up your credit score that is a number up to

850 is that you pay your bills on time each and every month or in reverse if you don't

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