Sure, it's easy to fall in love with the idea of buying a home. You've got it all planned out: a four-bedroom home in your favorite neighborhood with a manicured lawn and home office. Sounds perfect!

But if you'll be applying for a mortgage, it’s worth improving your credit score, also called a FICO score—a simplified calculation of your history of paying back debts and making regular payments on loans. When you borrow money to buy a home, lenders want to know you'll pay them back in a timely manner, and a credit score is an easy estimate of those odds.

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