Many people get very worried about their credit rating, or credit score as they say in the U.S. Here our American finance correspondent expalins a little about credit scores:

Credit scores are a lot like opinions – everybody has one. They got popular from the granddaddy of all credit scores – the FICO score, but since then they’ve come out of the woodwork. Which one is most important? The one that your lender is going to use!

Especially when you’re buying a house, it’s good to know which credit score will be used. For mortgages, lenders most often use the FICO score. FICO is named after the Fair Isaac Company, who developed the secret mathematical formula that makes up the FICO score. FICO is so entrenched that it is sometimes used as a criteria in determining whether or not your mortgage can be sold in the secondary market. The easier it is to sell your mortgage, the more likely it is that you can get good terms.

Nowadays, everybody else has a “credit score” and coincidentally, they look a lot like a FICO score. All of the major credit reporting companies have their own credit scores, and they’ll sell you their score if you let them. While it may be interesting to see variations among scores, it doesn’t do you much good. If you need a FICO score, get a FICO score. That way you’ll know exactly what the lender is looking at.

Where do you get a FICO score? One place to start is Fair Isaac’s consumer website: www.myfico.com. You can buy all three FICO scores (yes, you have three of them – one for each of the major credit reporting companies) for $44.85. If you know that your lender only uses one score, you can buy them individually for $14.95 each.