FICO, founded in 1956 as Fair Isaac by engineer Bill Fair and mathematician Earl Isaac, provides consulting services and enterprise decision management systems. They developed the FICO scores, a measure of credit risk, which are the most used credit scores in the world. FICO scores are available in the United States from Equifax; Experian; TransUnion; and PRBC.  FICO, like Band-Aid or Kleenex, has become a generic symbol of credit worthiness. Home loan scores can range from 300-850 and are a statistical calculation based upon payment history (35%), credit utilization (30%), length of history (15%), credit type (10%), and recent credit checks (10%). Items stick around for seven years; bankruptcy for ten. The score is intended to predict the liklihood the borrower will have a 90-day late in the next 2 years.  Maxing out a card, a 30-day late payment, debt settlement, foreclosure (150 point ding) or bankruptcy (150-200 point hit) all negatively impact FICO. Sometimes folks wonder about whether or not a short sale hurts your credit score as much as a foreclosure (see other articles in this blog), it depends on whether the borrower stays current on their payments and how the lender reports the sale (try for "debt repaid in full").    My thanks to Rob Chrisman and Wikopedia for much of this content.