You often hear about steps you can take to increase your credit score (like pay your bills on time, etc) and steps that can lower your score. But how much will those things affect your score - and by how many points?

A federal government publication has some nice examples of real-life scenarios and the impact they have on your score. Scroll about half way down this page to see the examples. Maybe you can relate to some of these situations.

PS: Check out our earlier blog post about the factors that make up your score. And this post gives you a free credit score estimate.