Any time you want to apply for a card your credit history will be checked. Even if you do not have a score based on a credit card, your history of making your payments on time can be checked and your financial situation can be checked too. There are cards that are approved without having a financial history or having a bad finance score. However you can expect these cards to have high interest rates and high fees. If you have a card and make all your payments on time and show that you can manage your debt your financial score will most probably go up. But sometimes your finance history score goes down if you miss a payment, if you are late with a payment and even if you close down another card where your balance is at zero. The same ways that there are methods to increase your credit score there are ways to lower your credit score.

You can lower your credit score by applying for too any credit cards, by having fines and not paying them on time or by using more money than you can afford to give back. If this is the case you will have difficulties getting good credit cards, getting approved for higher credit limits and maintaining a good credit score. The benefits of having a good credit score are that the better your score, the better interest rates you can get, the easier you get approved for a new credit card, the higher your credit limit is going to be and generally the more advantages you will have. Fortunately the same industry that is responsible of keeping track of credit scores is offering ways to improve your credit score if you need too. The first step in such a case is to start making your payments on time and to spend small amounts of money from your credit limit. If you do this for several months and get into a routine of prioritizing your payments and making them on time your credit score will increase slowly but surely.

One of the things you should be doing to improve your score is asking for credit score reports and checking if there are any mistakes in them. If there are mistakes and you can prove for example that a payment they say was made late was actually made on time, you can correct that and get points added to your credit score. When you have to spend money from your credit limit don't go higher than 25% of your credit limit. This way your payments will be manageable and you can show you are responsible enough to use money from your credit limit and pay it back on time. Staying close to the lower amount that you can spend from your credit limit will help you increase your credit card score. Some people also decide to close the unused credit card accounts or the ones that they are not using. This can be a negative thing to your credit score because the more account you close the lower your credit limit will be. For example if you have 5 credit cards and the sum of the credit limit on all of them is 10,000, if you close three of them whose credit limit add up to 6,000, your new credit limit will only be for 4,000. This might be interpreted as not being able to pay back more than the maximum credit limit and thus your credit score will be lowered.

Try to always remember that it is very easy for your credit score to be lowered and even a single late payment can lower your score significantly. In the same time it takes a longer period of tie to build back your score and benefit of good credit cards offers interest rates and deals. Also when using money form your credit limit don't go too much into that amount and remember that the credit score you have can be a reason not to get a certain job or not to be able to rent a place or not to be able to get a loan. So the best things to do are to get one or two cards, use them wisely, increase your card score to the level you want and keep it there.