5) In addition to reporting on how you pay bills, credit reporting agencies also assign you a score that quantifies your creditworthiness. TRUE or FALSE, you should order your credit score once a year.

Although it can be intensely irritating to know that you're being scored, you do not need to check them on a regular basis. The big thing to understand about credit scores is that they are not at all static. In fact, your score doesn't even exist until someone asks what it is. When someone wants to know your score, it is calculated on the spot based on what is in your report at that exact moment in time. According to Fair Isaac, the company that supplies software to the big reporting agencies, the score calculated for you will go up and down based upon what you do from day to day.

When you're considering a big financial event like buying a house or a car, it is worth a check of your scores to see how you are classified and how solidly you fall into your rate category. If your scores put you on the edge of being forced into higher rates, the time and expense to track them can be worthwhile. On its website, Fair Isaac offers an interactive tool that calculates one score (based on Equifax profile data) and lets you test out what you can do to improve it.

Other than that, you can forget about your scores. If you fall solidly into one of the prime or sub-prime categories, any variation from day to day or from agency to agency probably won't affect you in any real way. So why make yourself angry? You have more interesting things to do.

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