5 Major Threats To One's Credit Score A person s credit score is an extremely important tool, especially if the individual wishes to apply for a loan, or wants to get insurance. Maintaining a good credit score is crucial for maintaining a sound financial picture, since this allows the person to apply for loans without encountering too much hassle. 5 Ways To Repair Your Credit Card Debt A credit card is a small plastic, rectangle-sized card which has a magnetic strip that s connected to a credit account, and allows the owner to buy various goods and services. While owning a credit card offers its benefits, the sad thing is that if you don t use a credit card responsibly, you could face a soaring mountain of debt, which can help to taint, or entirely mangle, your credit score. How It Can Hurt Your Credit Score A lot of things can have a negative effect on a person's credit score. Among these include late credit card payments, unpaid medical bills or apartment rentals, a really large debt load, and bankruptcy. During the past five years, more and more people have filed for bankruptcy, either because of the lingering recession, or because of personal financial blunders. To steer clear of any delinquencies, try setting up your bills for automatic withdrawal from your personal ckeching account, so that you won't have to deal with any collection agency in the future. Balance Your Credit Card Spending Regardless of whether you have one, two or three credit cards, remember to spend wisely and balance your credit card obligations. And while some credit monitoring agencies brag about their daily monitoring, the truth is that it s not as real-time as advertised, since many creditors often are late, or incur delays, when reporting new data to the credit bureaus. There are other alternatives to credit monitoring services though. The choices include identity-monitoring services, which cost less, and provide you with a fair amount of credit report monitoring for free. Credit Score Monitoring And Starting A New Business For those planning to start their own business, credit score monitoring is an important and must-do step, which helps protect a businesses' ability to borrow from lenders, at competitive interest rates. In getting a deeeper understanding of the value of credit score monitoring, a business owner must first analyze how their business credit profile is built, and learn what the score really means, as well as find out exactly who looks at it.