My husband passed away a few years ago and I paid off our house/cars and have just lived on cash since. My insurance rates have been going up and when I shopped my homeowners around the other day they said my credit score was bad and that was a contributing factor to my rate increase. So I pulled my score and it's definitely bad. It seems to indicate the length of time since any recent credit history is a major factor in my score. There were some negative marks right after he passed away while I was stuck waiting on life insurance; however, everything is paid off and the thing is that I haven't used credit at all for 4 years. I opened a small credit card, that I keep at right over 1% utilization. I just opened a student loan but nothing is owed on it at this time. WHAT I am wondering is will the student loan qualify as the installment loan? I also opened a Kohl's card so I would have a dept store card on there. What all other types of credit am I supposed to have?
