Mortgage Rates
Your credit score helps determine how much you can borrow and the interest rates you'll pay. These sites explain some strategies for maintaining or increasing your credit score.
This video and article at MoneyTalksNews includes a laundry list of ways to clean up and improve your credit score. You get a better score by asking for and getting higher credit-card limits - and then paying down the balances. It's also possible to ask the credit company for a "good-will adjustment" - You won't be offered this option so you have to request it.
Jim Wang's post on boosting a credit score, found at U.S. News and World Report, notes that low credit-card balances help your score. And, if you have more than one credit card from the same bank or issuer, you may increase your score by consolidating those cards. That's because the average age of your lines of credit is part of the score, Wang says.
The Money Girl website includes this post by Laura Adams, with tips for raising a score. Never to max out credit cards because your score drops as you increase "utilization". That's also a reason not to close unused credit-card accounts, Adams says.
On this website you can get your credit reports for free, from the reporting companies Equifax, TransUnion and Experian, once a year. Study your credit reports and look for errors that can lower your credit score and cost you in higher interest rates or even get you turned down for loans.