You are planning to buy a house, car, or a property, and want a bank to lend you the required funds; you may need to take a look at your credit history. Good credit history maintained by you can do wonders for you when you are borrowing money from reputed banks. Similarly, if you’ve a poor credit history, banks might not come in terms with you on your loan amount. Credit history or score determines if you fall under a low-risk or high-risk category. Maintaining a good credit score puts you into a low-risk zone and banks could bestow their trust upon you with the loan amount you agree to return.

So if you are looking to maintain a good relationship in the financial sector (eg., banks, private firms, etc.) you should keep a good credit score throughout.
And how do you maintain a good credit score or improve on the existing credit score?

1. If you’re using your credit card a lot, and have a propensity of exceeding your credit limit on many occasions, make it a point to pay the excess bill you might have accumulated by using the credit card on time. Do not wait until the last minute, as there are chances that you might end up making late payments.
2. In order to keep your credit score to a low-risk zone, try to reduce your credit card usage, thus reducing the balances on your credit cards, which will further improve your credit score.
3. You’ve been using your credit cards with different banks for quite some time now, and have also showed a good behaviour while paying your credit card bills. Perhaps you’ve the tendency of maintaining low balances on your credit cards and that has earned you high scores with the respective banks. Don’t close such accounts, albeit no usage on such accounts. These will add points to your credit in the long run.
4. Try to transact in cash while making a purchase rather than using your credit cards. Apply for credit only when you can’t do without it.
5. When you are married, you tend to maintain joint accounts with your partner. And if things go wrong in your relationship and you choose to separate from your partner, it is advisable that you close the joint account and keep the one which belongs to you.
6. Reviewing your credit scores on a timely basis helps boost your credit scores by correcting the credit inaccuracies, if there are any.
7. Whenever you apply for a credit card or apply for loans, an inquiry is set up by your creditor, to do your background check. More the number of such inquiries, more hindrances will it cause on your credit scores.
8. If your credit report lists bankruptcy filed into your account, your credit score will drop immediately. Therefore, you should avoid filing for bankruptcy at any cost. And if you’ve already filed for bankruptcy, try clearing all your outstanding bills and payments with immediate effect.
9. Many people would try to incorporate all their balances from different sources into one credit card. You should avoid mixing your credit balances so as to eliminate any confusion paying bills and thus protect yourself from ruining your credit score.
10. It is important that you maintain a good relationship with your creditors as they can give you better solutions regarding your bill payments, if you’ve problems making those payments on time. You can even buy time with your creditors to pay your bills.