I heard a great explanation of this recently on the news. It’s a number that (taking a bunch of other things into account like payment history for bills including mortgage, loans, etc, credit history (mainly think “how long have I had and used a credit card) and other factors into 1 number from 300-800. This number tells people “how likely am I to pay back credit?/how good of a borrower am I? (From a bank’s perspective$” the higher the number, the “better” of a borrower you are.

This is important and you should care because those with higher credit scores:

• can get lower interest rates when you go to get a mortgage
• would actually qualify for higher loan amounts/can borrow more money, and a bunch of other stuff.