Have you ever seen your credit score crash? Sometimes at the last minute? We’ve all been surprised by credit reports that weren’t as great as we wanted them to be. This is how to make sure your credit report is headed in the right direction, especially if your going to get a home loan mortgage in the next 30 days.

Any company, organization, or individual with a “legitimate business need” can request to see your credit history, and these requests are known as credit inquiries. They are divided into two categories called hard and soft inquiries — hard inquiries will affect your credit history and credit score while soft inquiries will not.

A FICO Score is a brand of credit score — FICO stands for Fair Isaac Corporation and Fair Isaac is the company that developed the software program used by the credit bureaus to compile and calculate credit scores for U.S. consumers.

Having at least a 721 credit score will give you a chance to secure some of the best financing options on the market, get preferred interest rates on loans and credit cards, and have more negotiating power when you’re talking terms with a prospective lender.

Some credit cards come with absolutely no listed limit, which at first may seem like a good thing.