The stores are all decorated in red and green and lots of tinsel, and Mariah Carey is blasting from every big-box retailer. All that can only mean one thing: The holidays are here! And with the holidays, for many, it’s a time for spending time with your loved ones, and gift-giving. Whether this is your favorite time of year or you’re just waiting for it all to be over, these tips for protecting your score can help you get through the holidays and keep your credit unscathed.

How Do I Protect My Credit When Shopping for Holidays?

Protecting your credit when shopping for the holidays is important. Whether you’re trying to continue to build your score over the holidays or just maintain an already good one, these tips and tricks can help.

The knowledge we gain from word of mouth is often peppered with a lot of credit score myths, misunderstandings, and lack of clarity. It’s easy to give in to them, forget to recognize advantages, and live oblivious to the provisions offered by various services. Credit cards are not immune to this.

Sure, it’s important that you maintain a good credit score, but at the same time, it’s highly likely that you’re under a lot of assumptions regarding the factors that influence them.

There is a lot of noise out there about what is true and what’s not when it comes to a credit score. Today, we will talk over some misconceptions and tell you where to learn more about everything credit-related.

Here are the most common credit myths that many people still accept as true.

This is an interesting topic for me to write. I am almost obsessed with my credit score.  I check my latest score every now and then, if not every week. In 2016, the average credit score was 699. This is in the “good” range. But what is considered a bad credit score?

While there are different credit tiers we all know about, do they mean you don’t qualify for loans, credit cards, a house, a car, and other necessities? It’s important you know what your credit score means to your financial health.

There are many reasons that people fall into debt. It could be a job loss, a sudden illness or the mishandling of money. Unfortunately, once you get overwhelmed with your debt it can become difficult to make your monthly payments on time.

What usually follows are a few late payments and then a few missed payments. This can present quite a challenge to restore your good name. The potential cost of having bad credit can be huge unless you follow these steps to recover from bad credit.

Trying to gain better control over your finances can be a great goal to have. While all the different factors that affect how you save, borrow, and make money can seem complex when you’re starting out, you can easily become well educated about your finances by breaking up the knowledge you need into smaller chunks.

Understanding your credit score can be a great place to start. Having better credit can come with a huge set of advantages that can potentially help improve all of your finances. Here are the basics of what your credit score means and how you can improve it if needed.

This is a guest post from one of the readers, who wants to be anonymous.

Having a good credit score wasn’t always on the top of my priority list when I was in my early 20s. I never had an immaculate score, but it also wasn’t too shabby. I could have access to almost any type of financing: credit cards, car loans, and even a mortgage. I always paid my bills on time but I typically carried over some of the balance to the next month.

Knowing your credit score is very important as it greatly affects your financial ability, but for some reason no regulation exists that gives you the right to know it for free. Your credit score affects the interest rate you get when applying for a loan or even affect your eligibility for one. It also affects your fees why applying for financial services such as credit cards. Even your housing association, where you rent or your employer might want to verify your credit report and credit score. For Americans, having a good credit score makes things less costlier and more attainable.

Your credit report, which contains a lot of information about you and your financial whereabouts and it even required to calculate your credit score, is available for free according to the Fair Credit Reporting Act which allows you to order a credit report once per year from all 3 of the nation’s credit reporting companies (TransUnion Experian and Equifax). Each company uses a different method of calculating your credit score and each compiles its own credit report.