That’s why it’s prudent to keep your credit history clean and your credit score high. Generally speaking, a credit score is a composite of five factors: payment history, length of credit history, new credit, types of credit used, and debt. Payment history — paying your bills on time — is the most heavily-weighted factor. People with scores below 620 are generally considered high risk; those with scores above 760, low risk. Other things being equal, lower risk translates into lower interest rates for you.

In addition to paying your bills on time, the following suggestions can help you develop and maintain a high credit score:

	Keep your accounts open. Think twice before closing an account that’s had a zero balance for several years. That’s because lenders are looking for a long credit history. You might even consider regularly charging a few items to old credit cards, just to ensure that your accounts remain active. (Of course this presumes that you pay off the new balances in full.)
	Don’t apply for too many credit cards or loans. Whenever you apply for a new credit card or loan, lenders check with one or more credit bureaus, and these inquiries can reduce your overall credit score.
	Keep your account balances low. One rule of thumb is to keep your balances at 30% or less of your credit limit. Big balances can hurt your score, even if you pay the monthly minimum.
	Regularly review and correct your credit report. If you discover major errors in the report, ask the credit bureau to make corrections. Such errors might include late payments that aren’t yours or lower-than-actual credit limits.
	Don’t ask creditors to lower your credit limits. Reducing credit limits can shrink the gap between your balances and available credit, and this in turn can adversely affect your credit score.

For assistance with any of your financial concerns, contact our office.

2.  Tech Tip Weekly:  Eliminating Temporary Files

Free up space on your drive by deleting temporary files. The first step in looking for temporary files is to quit all of the programs you're running. Get out of them all; no exceptions! You never know whether those programs are creating temporary files. If so, you won't be able to delete the files.

Use the MS Windows Search feature to locate the different files on your system that have the following characteristics and then delete them -- after determining that it's safe to do so:

• .tmp extension: By far, the most common indicator of a temporary file is one that ends in the .tmp extension.
• Tilde (~) as first character: Not content with conforming to the .tmp extension standard, some programs create temporary files that begin with a tilde. For instance, you may see a file named ~DF3E05.tmp.
• Zero file length: Sometimes a program may create temporary files and put nothing in them. Since these files have no characters, they have no size.
• .bak extension: Technically, these files are not temporary. Instead, they're backup files. If the file is old, you may not need it anymore, and you can safely delete.
• .old extension: When programs update some files, they rename the original file with the .old extension.