Your credit score is a three-digit number that represents your creditworthiness, with scores ranging from around 300 to 850. Lenders use your credit score, and additional information such as income, to determine whether to approve you for a line of credit, how much the line of credit should be, and what interest rate to offer you. A high credit score can help you qualify for better interest rates, while a low credit score can make it difficult to get approved for credit at all.
Credit is your lifeline to the financial system. Having good credit makes it easier to achieve important milestones like renting an apartment, refinancing student loans, buying a car, or getting a mortgage for your first home. Conversely, having bad credit or no credit makes all those things harder to achieve.