How to Improve Your Credit Score

If you want to improve your credit score, Fair, Isaac offers these tips:

• pay your bills on time
• make up missed payments and keep all your payments current
• maintain low balances on credit cards and other "revolving debt"
• pay off debt rather than transferring it to a new account
• don't close unused credit card accounts just to raise your credit score
• don't get new credit cards that you don't need just to increase the credit available to you, and
• see more tips in "Understanding Your Credit Score" on the Fair, Isaac website, www.myfico.com.

Learn More About Credit Scoring

To learn more about credit scoring -- particularly its pitfalls -- you might want to visit the website of one of credit scoring's biggest critics, Greg Fisher. He beat the scoring proponents to the punch by scooping up the Web address www.creditscoring.com, from which he launches often strident, sometimes wacky, but usually well-documented attacks on the credit-scoring concept and the industries that support it. If you're interested in the other side of the story, get the booklet "Understanding Your Credit Score" from Fair, Isaac at www.myfico.com.