Having a solid credit score has been important for quite a while now, but it’s actually becoming more important these days as lending tightens up. There’s a reason that the Fair Isaac Corporation — the organization that calculates the credit score that most major lenders rely on — ha...

Getting an American credit card initially seemed non-trivial. You need to have a 'credit history' apparently. How do you get a credit history? Get a loan or a credit card. Show that someone trusts you enough to lend you money, but of course that requires a credit history. Yes, the chicken or the egg...

Do you want to be one of over eight million identity theft victims? No, but most of the services sold by "identity theft protection" companies you can get for free. Here's how. Identity theft protection companies love touting advertising statistics like "8.4 million adults were victims of identity t...

Did you know that when a company checks out your credit report, it can damage your credit score temporarily? It depends on if the inquiry is "hard" or "soft." Hard inquiries ding your score, soft don't. If you're going to get a mortgage or a car loan, a few points difference translates into a big ch...

Joseph is having problems paying his Capital One card, mainly because Capital One keeps making it hard for him to pay it, and then reports his payments past due after they've cleared the bank. Now he wants to know what he can do to remedy the situation. In 2006 I received a pre-approved card from Ca...

This morning the CEO of LifeLock, Todd Davis, was on the Today Show with Matt Lauer to defend his company’s service. He was there to answer a few pending lawsuits about how the LifeLock service doesn’t work and that its claims to protect and prevent identity theft are fraudulent claims. ...

Filed under: Finance, Internet, Web services It can be hard to build your credit history if you don't have a mortgage, car loan, student loans, or credit card bills to pay off. But odds are you're making other payments on a regular basis, like your rent and utility bills. They just don't usually cou...

After interviewing a few of the places I've applied for work at, I've discovered a disturbing trend; my bad credit history is being read by potential employers and, based on this bad credit history, I'm being judged as irresponsible and therefore it is determined that I do not qualify for ...