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.

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.

Keep in mind that changes in your FICO score take a long time to occur but if you live by the following guidelines, your credit score will improve over time.

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.