Great credit is key to getting good loans. In this market where lending is tight and money isn’t freely flowing, the only way to get someone to lend you money is with good credit. Here are a few ways to achieve this.

Credit monitoring services like ones from myFICO is very good because it automatically keeps track of your credit report and alerts you whenever there are any changes. You can of course choose to do it yourself but that’s 1000x harder.

Every year, you can get one credit report from each agency (there are three total). If you spread it out and get one from each company every couple of months, you can theoretically keep track of your scores and stay on top of it without much time in between.

Lenders will just pull your report when you request a loan, so if you are maxed out on your credit, they see it as a no-no. It doesn’t really matter if you pay off your credit cards every month because the utilization rate will be very high.

Don’t always try to apply for credit cards. Every time you apply for these cards, the companies will pull your credit report and that puts a mark on your credit. If there are many of these pulls in quick succession, the credit score will suffer because it is believed that only people who really need money will apply for so many lines of credit at the same time.

Use all your credit cards because having cards canceled on you is not a good sign that you are a good borrower. This will in turn lower your score.

Remember to apply for a few credit cards and have some lines of credit available even if you don’t need it. I used to only have one card and one day I was denied for my business credit card because they told me I only have 1 credit card and haven’t shown that I can pay off debt, even though I have tons of cash in my bank account.

Having multiple types of debt (car, mortgage, credit card, student loans) among others is good because it shows that you are able to handle bills that come due every month. It also works the same as having multiple credit cards.

Borrowing money is very tough in this economic environment but it’s not impossible. If you have good credit scores, you will still get a good rate and be able to buy a house or your dream car. Here are several ways which you can accomplish this.

Those paid monitoring programs are actually very good at helping you maintain a good credit score. What happens is that they keep a tab on your credit report for you and if there are any changes, they will send you an email so you can either “ignore it” if it was a legitimate change or dispute it right away.

Of course, there’s always the free credit report that you can get from each of the three credit report agencies per year. To maximize the benefit, separate the time that you get the reports. For example, get one in January, then another one in May and another one in September so you are on top of your credit.

You need to make sure you don’t use up all your credit all the time. This is because part of your credit score is dependent on your utilization rate, a measure of how much credit you have available versus how much you use.

Every time you apply for credit, they will ding your credit report. If there are too many within a short period of time, the score will be affected because no one with a good financial picture will keep apply for credit. If it’s not absolutely necessary, space out your applications so it doesn’t look suspicious!

Use all your credit cards because having cards canceled on you is not a good sign that you are a good borrower. This will in turn lower your score.

Remember to apply for a few credit cards and have some lines of credit available even if you don’t need it. I used to only have one card and one day I was denied for my business credit card because they told me I only have 1 credit card and haven’t shown that I can pay off debt, even though I have tons of cash in my bank account.

Different types of borrowing will help your credit scores because it shows that you have debt and are proven to be able to manage it. Without it, lenders really won’t know how you will react when the big bills come due every month.