There are several factors that contribute to calculating a credit score. In general, the bureau or company considers at least the following factors when calculating your credit score:

These factors may be weighted differently by each bureau or company so credit scores may vary.

For more information, see the question How is my credit score calculated?

Late payments will stay in your record for 7 years. You can dispute a late payment report that you believe is in error, however you will need to provide proof, such as documentation that you did make the payment in question on time. If the information is accurate, however, you'll have to wait the full seven years before it clears, but you may still be able to improve your score in other ways in the mean time.

A charge off is an entry in your credit report that indicates that a creditor has tried and failed to get a debtor to make good on overdue payments and has closed their account. Once the creditor charges off an account, they may sell it to a debt collector who pursues the debt further.

A charge off can have a strongly negative impact on your credit score.

If you’re contacted by a debt collector, it’s likely that your account is in default by more than 90 days, maybe as long as six months. In general,the negative effect of having your account in collection is usually less than the effect that you will have already incurred from being late, 30 days overdue, 60 days overdue, and 90 days overdue. The negative effects of a payment that is successively overdue stack up and will stay on your credit report for 7 years. Also, the information that the account was charged off (closed by the lender) will remain for the same amount of time regardless of whether you paid off the debt with the debt collector.

You may be able to work out a grace period with the lender before they send the debt to collection. However, once the debt is sold to the debt collector, the damage to your credit is usually already done.

A chapter 7 bankruptcy will remain on your credit report for 10 years. However, other negative information, including chapter 13 bankruptcy, will stay on your credit report for seven years. Accounts that you closed in good standing will remain in your record for 10 years. Accounts that were closed involuntarily will remain in your record for 7 years.

The amount of time that bureaus keep this account information is driven in large part by what the bureau’s customers want. Because financial institutions want this information when they determine risk in extending credit, the bureaus provide it. If financial institutions wanted the time period to be more or less than what it is now, the bureaus would likely change what they report. The 7 and 10 years have been used for many years and are now generally considered the industry’s standards.

Credit age is the age of your open, active accounts. When you close an account, it’s no longer active and ceases to count towards credit age. Closed accounts will, however, continue to count towards payment history for up to 10 years for accounts closed in good standing and up to seven years for accounts that were closed involuntarily.

Closed accounts will continue to count towards payment history, but not towards total accounts or credit age. Closed accounts remain on your record for up to 10 years if you closed them in good standing. If an account was closed involuntarily, it will remain on your record for up to seven years.

Closing an account, however, may adversely affect your credit utilization ratio, which considers the amount of available credit compared to the amount of credit you’ve used. For example, if you have three credit cards with credit limits of $1000 each and a balance of $200 on one, $400 on another, and $0 on the third, you have a total credit limit of $3000 of which $600 of credit is used. Your credit utilization ratio is 20%, which is pretty good. If you close the account that has a zero balance, you now have two accounts with a $2000 credit limit, of which $600 is used. Your new credit utilization ratio is 33%, which may negatively affect your credit score because, even though you haven’t added any debt, you now have a higher amount of debt in relation to your credit limit. Alternatively, if you paid off the credit card with a $400 balance and closed the account, you’d have a $2000 limit, of which $200 is used. Your credit utilization ratio would then be 10%, which may improve your credit score.

There’s no set number of credit accounts that’s optimal or suboptimal. Having multiple credit card accounts can help you maintain a good debt to credit ratio, but having too much debt spread across multiple accounts can have a negative impact.

Total accounts make up 10% of your FICO® Score. This is a separate consideration from your total balance owed, which makes up 30% of your score, and your payment history, which makes up 35% of your score.