Steven Bucci

The Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure (CARD) Act of 2009 focuses on your protections from credit card industry practices that have been deemed to be either unfair or just plain tricky. Among the key protections are easier-to-understand terms, fewer retroactive interest rate increases on existing card balances, more time to pay your monthly bills, more notice of changes to your credit card terms, and the right to opt out of many changes in terms on your accounts.

It has been said that a person can’t be too good-looking or have too many friends. This has never been truer than in the world of credit — at least the part about friends.The world of credit can be complex, unforgiving, and very expensive! The credit-granting, credit-reporting, and credit-scoring industries have become increasingly complex and powerful to the point where they are used for everything from issuing credit cards to getting jobs.

Every time you use or abuse your credit, it has an effect on your credit score. The impact varies with the type of action. Positive actions, like paying bills on time, raise your score and lower your risk in the eyes of a lender, insurer, or landlord. Negative actions do the opposite and, depending on what the damaging action was, could be a big deal or a minor and temporary inconvenience.

For most people, a house is more than just a building you live in. It’s a place you worked hard to earn, plan a life, grow a family, and make memories. It’s a home. Sometimes those dreams don’t come true, and that mortgage can become unsustainable. But misinformation, stress, and denial can make it hard to accept the writing on the wall when you’re in trouble with your mortgage.

Looking at credit as a renewable resource changes your perspective: You want to better understand how it works so you don’t unknowingly harm it. It also makes you responsible for not overusing or abusing this important resource to the point of endangerment, or even extinction. To be a good steward of your credit, you need to understand how credit coexists with all the other parts of your financial ecosystem and how it fits into the rest of your life.

Repairing your credit and keeping it in good standing is easier if you know what’s in your credit reports. Get a free copy of each of your credit reports every year and promptly correct any errors.Improving your credit also involves understanding how your credit score is calculated and how you can increase your score.

Everyone hates having debt, but most people can’t feasibly make a big purchase or handle a crisis without taking on some kind of debt, like student loans, auto loans, and credit cards. Debt happens to everyone at some point. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t do anything about it. Here you find some tips to start getting out of debt.

Financial goals and planning help keep your credit ecosystem in balance. You want to set goals for life’s major credit-related financial milestones and then create a plan to reach those goals. Among your goals may be paying for college, buying a home, or purchasing a car. Funding college Unless you’re fortunate enough to have a trust fund, you and/or your parents may have to take out a student loan to pay for your higher education.

The two major credit scoring models are FICO and VantageScore. The FICO score is better known, but VantageScore is gaining in usage every year. The components and weightings that are used to calculate credit scores are different for each model. Knowing how the scores are computed enables you to take actions to maximize your score.