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. However, a person cannot simply wish to receive credit as they please, because they will need to apply for it, and most credit companies also take a closer look at a person s credit report, to see if they are truly credit-worthy, and know how to manage their finances well. Here are the five basic elements of a credit report. - The problem with some credit monitoring agencies is that they charge fees which are unethically exorbitant. There also have been a few occasions where people cannot easily opt out of their credit monitoring service, even if they wanted to. While an unsatisfied credit monitoring agency client may wish to stop receiving, or reading credit reports, he or she will still be charged the monthly rate. Once you re in the site, choose your state from the pull-down menu, and start filling your information. Ask For Credit Reports From The 3 Major Credit Bureaus The next step would be to request for credit report from the 3 major credit bureaus, since you won t be charged with any fees. However, because you re only allowed one company per year, order them on a staggered basis throughout the year instead. For instance, if you had a $60,000 credit limit on your credit card, and you ve only so far used $6,000, or 10% of the credit limit, your balance must never go up to as much as 30 percent of your card s credit limit. Always make sure that you maintain a balanced proportion of used credit to available credit. But if you are confident of repairing your financial image , and you're confident of rebounding from your financial troubles, bankruptcy should not be a ghost that will keep haunting you for years, as long as you take concrete steps to change your wasteful financial habits, and improve your loan repayment capabilities.