In any game, including debt, there are strategies that will help you win. One of the easiest strategies to master is “no new cards.” As convenient as they are, and even though they have helped most of us through some experiences we may not have gotten through without them, credit card debt should be handled with great caution.

Remember, the maximum limit on each card with your name on it is the amount that goes in your indebtedness column on your credit report. In other words, let’s say you have four cards with a total maximum limit of $12,000. Creditors will look at that $12,000 as if you have indeed charged that much against them, even though you may only have a $250 balance on one of the cards.

One common marketing approach is to offer you a credit card at a low rate if you will consolidate all of your cards onto that card. People who are behind in their payments of other debts often apply for several of them.

The next time you get one of those offers in your mailbox, and I would guess it will be within a week since the average American gets twenty each year, look at it closely. If it looks at first glance like you have been preapproved for credit of $100,000, look again. Find the words “up to” in smaller letters. At the risk of having it show up on your credit rating, I don’t recommend applying for it.

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You should examine your credit report at least twice a year. In examining your report, it is important that you be on the lookout for any erroneous listings on your credit report. While it is necessary to question any irregularities and contact the credit bureau with any challenges, it is a federal offense to lie when disputing your credit report.

To get a copy of your credit report, contact the three major credit bureaus. If you have been denied credit within the past 60 days, they will issue a free report to you. If you live in Colorado, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, or Vermont, you can get a report at no charge; otherwise, the charge is $8 unless your state has arranged a different fee with the credit bureaus. When I last checked, Maine’s cost was $3 and Connecticut’s was $5. All of the credit bureaus may not have the same information, so you will have to look at all three.

There are offers on the Internet to send you a compilation of all three. Only Experian and Equifax allow online delivery, so the three agency report must be sent to you by mail; you may find several companies that make this offer for various prices.

To order the credit reports, you need to send them copies of some identification that shows your name and address. Your driver’s license, a recent utility bill, or a recent credit card bill will do just fine. You also need to include your signature with the letter so they know you are authorizing the credit report. You may order your report and your spouse’s at the same time, but your spouse must include the same information and also sign the letter. There are stiff fines and possible imprisonment for ordering a credit report without proper authorization.

If you have a spotty credit history, you may feel shy about asking for your credit reports. You can’t clean them up if you don’t know what is in them. Don’t waste time beating yourself up; just boldly ask for your credit report and do what you need to do to fix it.

If you need some help creating a form to order your credit reports, try this as an example.

After you have received your credit reports, go over them very carefully and make sure that they are correct. If you find that you have old credit cards or store cards still on your credit report, call the creditors and ask them to close the accounts and inform the appropriate credit bureau. Each of the three major credit bureaus is supposed to inform the others of changes you requested, but you will need to look the next time you get your credit report to see if it was done.

While it would be ideal to have a perfect or near-perfect credit report, the reality is that many people have negative marks on their credit history and still get loans. This doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to get credit; it just might affect the size of the down payment required to make your purchase or the rate of interest.

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All games have scores. In the game of debt, the score is your credit report. You need to know what your score is and if it is accurate. Your credit report is also known as a credit file or credit history. Almost everyone has one, whether you know it or not. At one time or another, individuals or businesses have received information about you, including your name and Social Security number. They do not need to ask your permission to look at your credit report, but they do have to pay the reporting agency to do so.

Credit bureaus or credit reporting agencies are not governmental agencies, they are businesses in the private sector that collect information on you. Their customers are banks, finance companies, credit card companies, mortgage companies, merchants, landlords, and even schools anyone who has a need to know about your reputation in the way you use money, good or bad.

When I was a little girl in Iowa and my grandma was trading her eggs for groceries, storekeepers often had accounts open for people to buy groceries and other things the general store sold. If I went to the store to get some things for my mother, Grandpa Jackson (as he was called by all the kids in town) would just write it on my parents’ account and my dad would go in and pay up the account when he got paid. Everyone in the township knew everyone else and their business, so storekeepers knew who they could extend these open accounts to and who they wouldn’t.

People made businesses of gathering information on people in communities, and merchants would have a database to share so they could determine the credit-worthiness of those who wanted credit extended to them. A credit application form came from that idea, and as there became more and more need to see information about someone, files were gleaned from public records such as tax liens, bankruptcies, judgments, and anything anyone reported against the individual.

Today, there are thousands of credit bureaus collecting all sorts of information on consumers. Much of it is entered manually, and the error rate is huge. In March 1999, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group reported that 70 percent of credit reports in their sample contained mistakes or errors of some kind and 29 percent contained serious errors that could be used to deny credit; 19 percent of the credit reports contained accounts that could not be identified or did not belong to the consumer; and 26 percent contained credit accounts that were closed by the consumer but listed as open.

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