Generating capital for your business is highly dependent on your personal credit score. Your Payment History makes up 35% of your entire personal credit score. The other key indicators that make up your credit score are Length of Credit History, New Credit, Types of Credit Used, and Amounts Owed. The percentage breakdown of each in relationship to your personal credit score is as follows:

Payment History 35%
Amounts Owed 30%
Length of Credit History 15%
New Credit 10%
Types of Credit 10%

Each of these areas has specific items associated with it to determine that percentage of your personal credit score. The 30% of your score associated with Amounts Owed is made up of: Amounts Owed

Amount owing on accounts
Amount owing on specific types of accounts
Lack of a specific type of balance, in some cases
Number of accounts with balances
Proportion of credit lines used (proportion of balances to total credit limits on certain types of revolving accounts)
Proportion of installment loan amounts still owing (proportion of balance to original loan amount on certain types of installment loans)

The formulas that create your score look at the averages of consumers and compare you to those. For example with the Amounts Owed section the typical consumer has access to $12,190 on all credit cards combined. More then half of all people with credit cards are using less than 30% of their total credit card limit. Just over 1 in 8 are using 80% of more of their credit card limit. About 48% of credit card holders carry a balance of less than $1,000. About 10% are far less conservative in their use of credit cards and have total card balances in excess of $10,000. When we look at the total of all credit obligations combined (except mortgage loans), 54% of consumers carry less than $5,000 of debt. This includes all credit cards, lines of credit, and loans-everything but mortgages. Nearly 30% carry more than $10,000 of non-mortgage-related debt as reported to the credit bureaus.

Based on your current situation you can see how your score may be higher or lower compared to the average statistics of the general consumer.

Length of Credit History that makes up 15% of your score is determined by:

Time since accounts opened
Time since accounts opened, by specific type of account
Time since account activity

The average consumer's oldest obligation is 13 years old, indicating that he or she has been managing credit for some time. In fact, we found that 1 out of 5 consumers who recently applied for credit, had credit histories of 20 years or longer. Only 1 in 20 consumers had credit histories shorter than 2 years.

New Credit that makes up 10% of your score is determined by:

Number of recently opened accounts, and proportion of accounts that are recently opened, by type of account
Number of recent credit inquiries
Time since recent account opening(s), by type of account
Time since credit inquiry(s)
Re-establishment of positive credit history following past payment problems

An important indicator of new credit is inquiries. The number of times someone pulls your personal credit report. When someone applies for a loan or a new credit card account - in short, any time one applies for credit and a lender requests a copy of the credit report - this request is noted as an inquiry in the applicant's credit file. The average consumer has had only one inquiry on his or her accounts within the past year. Fewer than 7% had four or more inquiries resulting from a search for new credit.

Types of Credit Used makes up 10% of your score and is:

Number of (presence, prevalence, and recent information on) various types of accounts (credit cards, retail accounts, installment loans, mortgage, consumer finance accounts, etc.) An average consumer has a total of 11 credit obligations on record at a credit bureau. These include credit cards (such as department store charge cards, gas cards, or bank cards) and installment loans (auto loans, mortgage loans, student loans, etc.). Not included are savings and checking accounts (typically not reported to a credit bureau). Of these 11 credit obligations, 7 are likely to be credit cards and 4 are likely to be installment loans.

Depending on what side of the averages you fall on your score will be higher or lower. Obviously if the average consumer has 11 credit obligations and you have 50, you are likely to have a lower score then someone with 13 with everything else being the same on your credit files.

It is extremely important to manage your personal credit scores and know what your score is at all times. I recommend that you purchase a monitoring service from FairIssac the developer of the formula that tracks your score by going to: www.smallbusinessconsulting.com/fico I recommend it to everyone I know because of the real threat of identity theft and because of the importance of your score in everyday life.

David Gass is President of Business Credit Services, Inc. His company publishes a weekly e-newsletter on Small Business Consulting at their web site http://www.smallbusinessconsulting.com You can sign up for their free newsletter by visiting http://www.smallbusinessconsulting.com