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.

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.

The government has made it law that the credit report agencies need to give you a free report every few months. This not only allows you to stay on top of everything within your credit report but also give you a chance to dispute any changes to it in a timely manner. Just make sure you request it because it won’t be automatically sent to you.

One way to keep your scores high is to keep your credit utilization rate low. What this means is that if you have a maximum credit of $10,000, don’t use it all up! Since lenders may check your credit at any time, it doesn’t matter if you pay off your balance every month because at the time that they are checking it, your balance may still seem high.

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!

Inactive cards will eventually be flagged by the credit card companies and be canceled. The credit report will just say canceled by card company without any explanation so use all your cards in regular intervals.

In general, having 5 cards or more is a good way to make sure lenders see you as a person that is able to handle debt and pay them off. If you only have one card and no other debt, it’s hard for companies to see whether you have the ability to pay bills on a timely manner and they will be hesitate to lend you money.

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.