10 Ways You Think You’re Helping Your Credit But Are Actually Hurting It

Having good credit can be very helpful when taking out loans or applying for credit cards. Your credit is the report card major financial institutions use when making decisions about lending money or extending consumer credit.

This is why it’s important to stay on top of your credit score and review your credit report regularly. According to data that credit bureau TransUnion pulled for Credit.com, more than a quarter of consumers have bad or subprime credit. This is defined as having a credit score between 300 and 600.

While a number of behaviors that hurt your credit are pretty obvious such as being late on payments, others can be quite surprising. Some of the ways you think you’re helping your credit may actually be messing with your score.

Click or swipe through to check out 10 things that may seem like they help but actually hurt your credit…