Apply for a credit card — Chase Freedom offers attractive rewards and consumer-friendly terms and cardholders will earn cash back on purchases and bonuses for card use, in addition to paying no annual fee.

Borrowing money today requires impressing an increasingly hard-to-please crowd. With creditors of all kinds more cautious than ever, you need an A+ application to land the best terms — and that means an A+ credit score, the number lenders use to judge your risk of default.

Having more than one credit account can boost your credit score. If possible, strive for at least three good accounts.

A 0% balance transfer offer can seem like an amazing way to eliminate credit card interest payments. Yet some credit card users remain concerned that taking advantage of these offers will hurt their credit score. In fact, the opposite may be true as there are several reasons why receiving a 0% APR balance transfer credit card may actually improve one’s credit score.

While on a shopping spree, you open credit-card accounts at several of your favorite department stores to snap up discounts of 10% or 15%. You’re saving a bundle, but you may be chipping away at your credit score.