Hey there, this is Motley Fool Answers. Straight Talk that'll have you making brilliant money moves in no time. I'm Allison Southwick and I'm joined by Robert Brokamp and Dayana Yolkham, personal finance experts and just generally nice people here at the Motley Fool. Thank you.

It's true. You don't know us well enough. Not at all. Today we're

going to talk about a taboo number, your credit score. Much like your age and your IQ, if your number is

bad, you probably don't want to talk about it. And if it's good, no one wants to hear you talk about it.

You know what, don't ask either. I've asked people like, how old do you think I am? I never like the answer. Oh, never asked that question. Right. And I haven't asked about my IQ,

but that'd probably be even more disappointing. In the show, we're going to reveal the mysteries

and misconceptions about your credit score. And before we're done, we'll send you off with our best

advice for attaining a stellar score. Spoiler alert, it's easy and simple. Finally, we're going to sit down with

best-selling author, Jake Halpern, for three questions we always ask. So let's get into it,

shall we? Let's. So what is your credit score? Let's see how Investopedia defines it. It's the

statistically derived numeric expression of a person's creditworthiness that is used by lenders to assess the likelihood that a person will repay his or her debts.

So I got bored at statistically derived.

Plain English, please.

Plain English, your credit score is basically, in simple terms, your money GPA.

It's a measurement of how well or how poorly you've handled money that you've borrowed from people.

So credit cards.

Bank loans, car loans, even student mortgages, all of that stuff.

And sometimes even if a utility provider is reporting on your bill payment

habits, that can show up there as well.

So when a company requests your credit score, it's basically looking for an answer to the

question of how much can I trust this person to pay me back? And the level of

risk that they've deemed you bring to the table is then going to be reflected in the interest

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