Have you ever thought about how much you would pay to keep your credit card? Years of no annual fees, favorable grace periods, and reasonable interest rates probably kept you from pondering such a question.

 Barney Frank, Chair of the House Financial Services Committee, and Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) are tired of waiting for their new bill to take effect. In fact, last week they announced new legislation that would move the effective date for the remaining provisions of the Credit CARD Act from next February to Dec. 1, 2009 - exactly two months from today. In a press release issued by the House Financial Services Committee on 9/24, Maloney claimed that "credit card companies are taking advantage of this period between the signing of the bill and the current effective date." There's no doubt about that. As you may have experienced yourself, millions of consumers have been forced to deal with reduced credit limits and interest rate hikes averaging 20% ever since the bill was passed, and Maloney believes the "breadth and depth of the rate hikes happening now point to the need for faster consumer protections."

Piggybacking, a technique often used to build credit by paying to become an authorized user of a stranger's credit card account, has been under fire since it first gained widespread popularity in 2007. In practice, the loophole in the credit scoring system works great, which is perhaps why it's ruffled the feathers of so many people that find it unfair and sleazy. Should it really be so easy to dupe the system? Instead of slowly building my credit history one on-time payment after the next, I can simply pay someone to add a credit card with a high credit limit, low balance, and a clean payment history directly to my credit report. And voila - I instantly have stellar credit and thus a higher credit score. Millions of people have benefited from artificially boosting their credit scores this way, and there's no doubt in my mind that many credit repair agencies have made a nice profit from connecting buyers and sellers of trade lines as well.

The ever-increasing hype over the importance of credit scores has led to a lot of bogus myths about what actually determines them. You’ll be happy to know that what you ate for breakfast or how well you can balance on your left pinky toe while checking your bank statement has absolutely no bearing on this elusive three-digit number.

In short, there are five key factors that are used to calculate your credit score (payment history is the most important of these). But the aim of this particular post is to dispel the rumors about other factors commonly believed to influence your credit score. So here’s a list of five things that have no impact on your credit rating (insert sigh of relief here).

Welcome back to our blog series: M³ - Marriage Money Mistakes.  The first financial mistake for married couples we discussed was to close all credit cards after you get married; this is a mistake because doing so will lower your credit score substantially.

Continuing our blog series, here is the second mistake we'll discuss: