Part of rebuilding your credit is proving that you can pay your bills on time. If your bad credit episode left you without any credit cards, you’ll have to open new ones.

In an effort to clean your cluttered finances, you close three zero balance credit card accounts. Lightening your wallet feels good now, but the potential hit to your FICO Score could weigh you down later.

Wells Fargo and Discover Card say they now provide free credit scores along with Barclaycard and First Bankcard — financial monitoring website, CreditKarma, touts that you can get your credit scores online in minutes — others now offering free scores include the online credit-educational sites Credit.com, Quizzle and CreditSesame.

Credit scores — they’re like report cards for grown-ups. It’s a three-digit “grade” you get on a scale that ranges from 300 to 850. Your score indicates your creditworthiness to potential lenders, banks, landlords, insurance companies, and even to some employers, for instance. I’m sure you know that the higher your score the better.

FICO isn’t the only number used to determine your credit risk — the score that counts is the one your lender uses. There is no single credit score number — the compilers of the widely accepted FICO Credit Score allow lenders to customize their system, so different lenders produce different scores.