Five Surprising Things That May Affect Your Credit Score

Working hard to maintain your credit score can be tough, but if you think only cars, mortgages and credit cards affect your credit score you may be surprised about other things that could affect your credit score as well.

1. City fines or Parking Tickets - uncollected parking tickets can actually hit your credit when the city sends the fines to a collection company. So make sure you pay those fines or tickets if you don't decide to dispute the fine.
2. Unsettled Accounts - Did you move and forget to pay your last utility bill? Uh oh, that's not good. The utility company can also send you to collections for non payment of the bill. Remember to give them your forwarding address to where they can send the last bill and make sure it gets paid. 
3. Closing credit cards - You just paid off all your credit cards and now you are ready to close them. WAIT! Don't do it! It may seem logical to close that credit card since you've decided you're never going to use it again, but don't! This can actually drop your credit score. 
4. Taxes, Taxes, Taxes - Death & Taxes this is what our grandfathers and great grandfathers preached about, Don't neglect to pay your taxes. Tax liens can affect your financial future. 
5. Hard inquires - So you were shopping for that new car and wanted to also open up a new credit card to buy some new furniture, then you decided you needed to see if you could qualify for the airline miles.....you just made yourself 3 hard inquiries. These inquires will impact your credit score in a negative way. If you have to apply for credit, be sure to only do it when it is absolutely necessary, every inquiry counts. 

Source: Transunion.com