Anyone who has recently applied for a mortgage knows that lenders are already looking much more closely at your financial affairs. But soon, they’ll be able to easily delve into the deepest recesses of your financial life, accessing information that never before appeared on your credit report.

Credit scores influence nearly all things financial in your life. Banks, credit card companies and others use credit scores in deciding whether to give you a loan, how much money you can borrow and how much interest to charge you. Here’s some advice for improving your credit score:

Start by doing a credit checkup — you can monitor your credit yourself by requesting a free report once a year from each of the credit bureaus through www.annualcreditreport.com but the free report won’t include your credit score, you’ll pay about $8 to get the credit bureau’s proprietary number.

The majority of credit scores don’t increase or decrease every month, largely because the person is in what is known as “steady state” or equilibrium where their patterns of credit use and payment are balanced over time.

There are a wide variety of myths floating around about what you should and shouldn’t do to improve your credit reports and credit scores.