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Components that make up your credit score are readily available. Many people are still surprised when they learn their score. In order to truly understand why your score is what it is, you need the detailed information contained in your credit report.

As required by The Fair Credit Reporting Act, you are entitled to one free copy of your credit report each year. Be careful where you obtain your free report. Many sites that claim to give you your report for free only do so if you register for another one of their services. The Federal Trade Commission’s website contains information on the official site offering this service.

The most obvious reason to check your credit report on at least a yearly basis is to make certain that it contains accurate information. Errors in your credit report can lower your credit score. The process for correcting errors, particularly glaring ones, tends to be relatively straightforward.

Readers who want to stay on top of their credit report even more closely might consider registering for a credit monitoring service. In addition to giving you access to your credit report at any time, some services allow you to set up customized email alerts to notify you if changes occur to your report.

For example, you might want to be alerted if the balance due on a particular account rose by more than a certain percent from the previous month. Similar alerts can be established for change of address, applications for new credit, etc.

With the use of a credit monitoring service, or at the very least reviewing your credit report on a yearly basis, you can ensure that your credit score will accurately reflect your credit-worthiness.

You might not realize it, but right now you are sailing on one of three financial ships. What are these ships? Where are they headed? The three ships are ships of your retirement. Where they are headed is a decision that you have made, consciously or as a result of the circumstances.

Let's look at each ship in detail to help you determine what ship you are on and what final destination it will lead you to.

The Work Ship – This ship will sail as long as your health can support it. Most people don't plan on being on this ship forever. They think that somewhere around age of 60 they will be able to get off this ship and end up on a sandy beach with a beverage, but this usually does not happen. The people that are on the Work Ship have no choice, and end up working in the steam rooms until the world retires them.

The Investment Ship – When you are on the Investment Ship, your money is working hard for you. To get onto the Investment Ship, you have to make an active decision to do so. The first step to get on this ship is finding out where you are now, so that you'll know where you can go and what the possible final destinations are.

After you have made your decision, you can board the Investment Ship and put your money to work for you. There will come a time on this ship where you will no longer have to work, because your money will be able to do the work for you. This ship provides for ultimate security for retirement and is the safest ship of the three.

The Charity Ship – This ship comes from the same shipyard as the Work Ship. Many people never plan on being on this ship, but they end up getting a free ride. The Charity Ship accepts all those that didn't think about their finances, procrastinated, and never established goals.

The Work Ship, Investment Ship or Charity Ship – which ship do you want to be on? Start working on your finances now, so that eventually you end up sailing into the sunset on the Investment Ship.

As college costs continue to rise, many students are looking for additional ways to make ends meet, ways that don't require picking up another part-time job or using credit cards. Coping with rising tuition costs and finding affordable living arrangements can be challenging in many college towns. Textbooks are always outrageously expensive.

Even the amount of time it takes to graduate has been increasing. Many engineering degrees for example routinely take five years to complete instead of the traditional four, tacking on another year of tuition and expenses. Despite these rising costs, many students still expect themselves to graduate without any debt. For some reason, they only think of student loans as debt, and they have no qualms about racking up massive credit card debt. This is both a dangerous and backwards notion.

Student loans are an option that many students dismiss while trying to graduate debt-free because they don't differentiate between different types of debt. I'm not going to say that finishing college free of debt is a bad thing, It’s overrated and starting to become less feasible.

Luckily while in college you are in one of the best times in your life to take on debt. Not because you are going to be graduating and instantly making six-figures (a dream best to get rid of now), but because you will be able to do what it takes to pay off the debt. As an undergrad you are in an ideal situation to carry some debt because you have zero dependents to support, no mortgage, few monthly payments, and minor living expenses. You also have more mobility to find a good job when you graduate.

The news is full of stories about people that get in over their heads with credit card debt and then get eaten alive by the interest rates. You don't really hear about people becoming overwhelmed by student loans. As it stands, being in your twenties with a college degree makes it very unlikely that you will fall beneath the poverty line.

Debt is an important part of modern finances; it's how you build a reputation with financial institutions so that when you need the really big loans you already have a good history. Your game plan shouldn't be to avoid all debt like the plague. It should be to become aware of different kinds of loans and debt. It’s easy to avoid getting in over your head with debt; all you have to do is use your head!

Many of us were taught we should avoid debt entirely, we never learned to distinguish between “good” debt and “bad” debt. Good debt provides opportunities to build credit, while bad debt leaves you buried. Think of student loans as bicycle training wheels for the banking world; they have incredibly low interest rates and a lot of nice perks that help make repayment easy.

For most student loans, repayment doesn't start until 6 months after you graduate, giving you time to find a job and begin to save. They can be deferred if you go to graduate school and they feature different repayment plans, including plans that adjust to your income.

If you plan to become a teacher or serve in the Peace Corps, there are special repayment programs to help you repay your loans. A student loan can be a strong feature on your credit report and help bring up your credit score. With low monthly payments you can setup automatic payments to easily build up a strong history of repayment, something banks love. Student loans do all this while also helping to take off some of the financial stress that has been distracting you from the reason you came to school in the first place, to learn!

While you might be hearing "Would you like to save 10% today?" more and more at the checkout line of your nearest retailer, there's likely something that you've been hearing less and less of which is helping to improve your life: Those familiar dial tones and modem sounds every time someone pays with their credit or debit card.

With the proliferation of company networks and a migration of point-of-sale systems (i.e. cash registers) to high-speed network based transactions, you are now unknowingly saving considerable amounts of time! The increased speed of transaction seems to vary by manufacturer, but a high-speed point-of-sale system can reduce the transaction time from 12 seconds to less than 3.

Is 9 extra seconds going to change your life? Probably not. But at three seconds per transaction, it would seem as though there is some truth to the latest marketing campaign of a credit card issuer that suggests that a swipe of the card is faster than cash and ultimately good for business. Now there’s nothing wrong with using that credit card at the cash register as long as you pay the balance in full at the end of the month!

This was a short but necessary interruption. Everything is now back to normal and you can resume your lending or borrowing activity at https://secure.lendingclub.com. Please accept our apologies for this interruption of service. Did someone trip on that wire again?

Renaud