Good credit takes patience and persistence and if you pay your bills on time and keep your credit card balances low over the long haul, you’ll be rewarded with a solid score.

You and I might revel in the crisp autumn weather, but your credit score hates this time of year. The reason? Starting in October and continuing through the next 90 days, many households dramatically increase their spending.

If you need a credit card but have a poor credit history, don’t despair — bad credit credit cards are available that can meet most needs and this is not common knowledge. No doubt you have had people tell you that if you have bad credit, no lender will touch you but this is not the case for most people. As long as you have the income to repay the debt, lenders will usually be prepared to loan to you.

You can file bankruptcy on just credit cards — you must list all of your credit cards and all of your debts when you file bankruptcy. Some people have gotten the wrong idea that bankruptcy help is no longer available for credit cards, medical bills or other categories of bills. The credit card industry spent millions of dollars promoting an anti-debtor message, which resulted in the passage of the pro-creditor bankruptcy amendments, BAPCPA — the myth grew with all the media stories about the law changes.

A FICO Score is a brand of credit score — FICO stands for Fair Isaac Corporation and Fair Isaac is the company that developed the software program used by the credit bureaus to compile and calculate credit scores for U.S. consumers.