If you don’t carefully attend to your credit score, that three-digit number can become a four-letter word. But understanding what drives it up and down will help you swear off the financial decisions that can have a negative impact. Much of your credit score is derived from the signals you send lenders about your financial habits. Put simply, they assume your actions with smaller lines of credit will carry through when larger sums of money are involved.

Source: Wall Street Journal January 20, 2019 19:00 UTC