Your credit report is becoming increasingly important to your life. So, it goes without saying that you should know what's in yours. You can purchase your credit report from the credit bureaus or a third-party, or you can get it for free. Here are Six Ways to Get Your Credit Report Free and only one of them requires a credit card.

Recommended Reading:

• How to Avoid a Free Credit Report Scam
• How to Cancel Your FreeCreditReport.com Account
• When Should You Check Your Credit Report

Your credit score is widely used by banks and other businesses to approve applications you make. Your credit score is based on information in your credit report like your payment history, debt level, and recent credit card applications. But, your credit score doesn't include everything about you, especially factors that could allow businesses to discriminate against you. That includes your race, nationality, and religion. Learn 12 things that are not included in your credit score.

Related:

• How Your Credit Score is Calculated
• The New FICO 08 Credit Scoring Formula
• How to Estimate Your FICO Score

Thirty percent of your credit score considers your level of debt. Credit scoring calculations compare your credit card balance to your credit limit to come up with your credit score. This balance-to-credit-limit ratio is called your credit utilization. Learn more about credit utilization and find out what balances are best for your credit score.

Related:

• When Balances Go Up, Credit Scores Go Down
• Dealing With a Credit Limit Cut
• Why You Shouldn't Close a Credit Card, the scoop from a FICO insider!

For your education and enjoyment, here is the latest credit and debt news.

• What people tweet about credit: 24 hours of credit card tweets. CreditCards.com
• 10 ways banks take your money. Wall Street Journal Online
• There's no statute of limitations on debt you owe the court. Philadelphia Daliy News
• More colleges charge convenience fees for students paying by credit card. Chicago Sun-Times
• Some Chase customers avoid minimum payment increases by converting their credit card to 5-year fixed rate loans. About.com Credit/Debt Management (check the comments)

Long gone are the days you could keep a credit card in your wallet and never use it. Now, if you don't use a credit card, you face the risk of having it closed by the issuer. If you want to keep your credit cards open because closing them would hurt your credit score, use them every two or three months. Charge a small purchase, then pay the balance in full when the statement comes.

Related Articles:

• 5 Credit Cards You Should Never Close
• What To Do About a Credit Limit Cut
• How to Survive the Credit Crisis

If you haven't figured it out yet, there's a right and a wrong way to use credit. Use credit the right way and you'll likely see your credit score improve, your interest rates decrease, and your credit limits increase. In short, you get rewarded for using credit wisely.

On the other hand, using credit the wrong way costs precious credit score points, leads to increased interest rates, and lower credit limits. When you use credit the wrong way, you might experience some unexpected results, like getting turned down for a job.

If you want to know how you should and shouldn't use credit, read Do's and Don'ts Of Using Credit.

Related:
10 Things You Should Know About Credit | Why Good Credit Matters

Effective August 2009, many Chase credit cardholders will see their monthly minimum payment more than doubled. Chase recently made the announcement via mail that minimum payments would increase from 2% to 5% of the current balance. That means if your current minimum payment is $250, your new payment would be $625.

It seems that the minimum payment increase is targeted at cardholders with low interest rate balance transfers. Chase couldn't raise interest rates on these balances because it previously promised cardholders low rates for the life of their loans. So Chase found another way to make money off these cardholders, in the short run at least. Assuming customers were actually able to afford the payment increase, Chase would only have an increased cashflow for the few years or so until these balance transfers are repaid. In the end, they lose out on a lot of interest that would have been paid under the lower minimum payment.

Even though a higher minimum payment hurts initially and takes some getting used to, it's better in the long run because you're able to pay off your debt quicker and end up paying less interest. Still, I think it's unfair that Chase hiked minimum payments with such short notice at a time when consumers are struggling to make ends meet. Unable to make the increased payment, I suspect many cardholders will be forced into default and worse, bankruptcy.

Though other credit card companies have yet to make this kind of change to minimum payments, I wouldn't be surprised if similar announcements came soon. The best option is to pay off your credit card balances as soon as possible. That way, you're not susceptible to changing credit card terms.

If at all possible, don't just let the credit card go into default. See What to Do About a Minimum Payment Increase for ways you can come up with the minimum payment.

"Chase Greed" (comment # 5) has the right idea. Complain to the FTC about Chase's unfair practice. If the FTC gets enough complaints they will launch an investigation and possibly force Chase to reduce their minimum payment. To file a complaint online go to https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov.

For your education and enjoyment...the latest credit and debt news.

• With one slash, credit card companies ruin the good credit you've worked on for years. BusinessWeek
• The Better Business Bureau warns of lower interest rate scams. Mid-Michigan NBC
• More scammers use "vishing" to trick you into giving out your credit card information. This is when the scammer alters the caller ID information to make you think your credit card company is calling you. Corvallis Gazette-Times
• American Express allows cardholders to set spending limits on authorized user credit cards. Wall Street Journal Blog

Why does it seem like debt collectors get away with so much? I believe it's because so many consumers simply don't know their rights when it comes to third-party collectors. For example, did you know that you can request proof of a debt's validity when a collector first contacts you about it? If the collector can't prove you owe the debt and that they are authorized to collect on it, they can't legally continue collection efforts.

Read Make Collectors Prove You Owe to find out more about debt validation and how to exercise your rights.

Related Articles on Debt Collection:

• Tactics For Paying Off Collections
• When Can Collectors Call?
• The Statute of Limitations on Debt

The hardest part about getting out of debt is usually paying it off. Income and expenses put limitations on how much you're able to put toward your debt every month. Coming up with some extra money will help you pay off the debt a lot faster, but where does the money come from?

There are ways to get more money for your debt. It's up to you to find and take advantage of them.

Read: How to Get Money To Get Out of Debt

Related Debt Resources:

• Do You Have Too Much Debt?
• Calculating Your Debt to Income Ratio
• Spending Habits That Lead to Debt