A lot of people just hate the fact that everything they do in life, the credit scoring companies watch closely and  put everything down in their little black book. Well, as much as you hate it, there's nothing that can be done about it. Every move you make in life – from applying for a job to buying a house – everyone's going to take notice. Why, if you're dating and hope that this person may one day decide to marry you, well, that may not happen if they find out your credit score lives in the basement. All you need to do is to build your credit. You just need to take your time and ease your way in. It doesn't even have to be painful.

Now when people talk about their credit score or their credit report, usually, they make it sound like it's everything in the world. Which isn't true – it's only one part of a healthy financial existence. For instance, you may have a perfect credit score, and yet, it doesn't take into account whether you've any savings at all, or whether you've given any money to charity or whether you've spent anything on your health at all.

To build your credit and to get the perfect credit score, all you need is to have a few loans, have a few bills, and to pay them on time. That's it. This is a good measure of how good your financial health is, but it isn't everything.

Which is not to say that you don't need to build your credit – it's important that you do. It's just that you don'thave to be overawed by the whole thing.

A lot of people have this simple rule about how often to check on their credit to see how everything is – they usually think that checking once a year makes good sense. Usually, that's only because they get a free credit report once every year. That's not how you should time it.

Even if you have to pay for it, you need to look at your credit report as often as you need to apply for big loan – for new car or house or something. If you check six months before you believe you will need to apply for a big loan, you'll have enough time to build your credit should you find that anything is deficient.

When you look at your credit report a few months ahead of a major loan application, you need to see if they have everything that they should. Sometimes, they do tend to leave out important information that could reflect positively on your credit score. They could have bogus information in their to. Your first step would be to make all the corrections necessary by calling the credit rating agencies.

Once you've fixed all that, you could buy your credit score once again and see what it is like.