Before I started spending most of my time writing for Bargaineering.com, I spent many of my formative years at Fatwallet (as far back as 2001!). One of the big ideas in the Finance forums was the App-O-Rama, where you applied for a lot of credit cards in a short period of time (on the order of just a few days). The idea was that by applying for many cards over just a few days, you would be approved because the hard inquiries wouldn’t appear in time for the other issues to see them. By the time they showed up, you had a lot of unsecured credit card debt.

The consequence of the App-O-Rama strategy was that your credit score took a heavy beating as all the hard inquiries appeared. I wrote a guest post at Consumerist covering the difference between a hard inquiry and a soft inquiry, if you want the full details. While I never conducted an App-O-Rama, I was intrigued by the strategy and followed all the forum posts by people reporting back on their experiences.

So how does credit report bumpage come into play?
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No.

Your credit score is a number calculated from the information in your credit report. Your credit report will contain information about your loans, other credit obligations, and negative actions in public record (bankruptcy, collections, court judgments). It actually contains absolutely no banking information so closing, or opening in most cases, a bank account does not hurt or help your score.

In some cases, your credit score might be hurt if you open a bank account. The most common case is if you open a checking account with overdraft protection. Since the bank may be giving you a short term, the overdraft protection, they may do a hard inquiry to see how credit worthy you are. If you are concerned, always ask the bank if they pull your credit and whether it’s considered a hard inquiry or soft inquiry.

So does that mean my recent rash of bank account closings will have no effect? Not necessarily. As you may remember in my post about checking your specialty reports, there is a ChexSystems report that collects information about your banking activity. Banks may see my activity, frown upon it, and deny me a bank account in the future. Is that enough to stop me from simplifying my finances? Not at all.

The 25% off code may have expired but people are reporting that CPPSAVINGS works for 20% off.

Every so often MyFICO, the consumer arm of credit score equation creator Fair Isaac Corporation, offers discount codes to some of their products. The product I’ve had the most interaction with has been the MyFICO ScoreWatch product, which has a 30 day trial, so I haven’t been keeping close tabs on the promotional codes lately.

The latest promotional code is valid until September 30th and it’s FinancialHelp25. It drops the price of all their products by 25%, making them:

• FICO Standard: Equifax – Normally $15.95, now only $11.96.
• FICO Standard: TransUnion – Normally $15.95, now only $11.96.
• Suze Orman’s FICO Kit – Normally $49.95, now only $37.46.
• myFICO ScoreWatch – A standing 30 day trial, $89.95 a year or $8.95 thereafter.

In the purchase process there will be a place to put in a promotional code, just enter FinancialHelp25 for 25% off.

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Whether you think we’re out of the recession or not (I would bet “no” based on the responses last week), it’s always important to play a little personal finance defense. Today, the topic is on credit scores and how to improve your score by taking a few small steps.

These aren’t steps you can use to boost your score 100 points overnight… those don’t exist. These are simply smart moves you can make, over and over again, that will ensure your score will be as accurate and as high as possible. And if anyone says they can boost your score 100 overnight, chances are it’s a scam (unless you have some egregious errors on your report!).

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Regularly requesting credit limit increases, if done correctly, can increase your credit score and mitigate the effects of canceling credit cards. This post will explain how to navigate the menus of American Express’ online interface so that you can request a credit limit increase without triggering a hard credit inquiry. I have done this successfully myself several times.

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After my ABC News Now interview a few months ago, the cameraman, Chris, asked me a quick credit question. He told me that his goal for the year was to pay down debt, a laudable goal, in my opinion. Paying down debt, after you’ve saved for an emergency fund, is the best thing you can do for your finances. It’s especially important when your, and everyone else’s, personal economic outlook seems grim. Chris paid off and then canceled the first of his cards. He wanted to know whether that hurt his credit score.

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If a recent Your Take post on credit card credit limits is any indication, there’s no secret to getting a higher credit limit on your card. I thought I was high with a near $70,000 credit limit but plenty of people had total unsecured credit limits in the $60,000 – $100,000 range. While it wasn’t a scientific survey, I wouldn’t surprised to read that, in general, unsecured credit limits are much higher than people expect.

That being said, I think a good way for a consumer to protect themselves from the somewhat unpredictable credit score system is by increase their credit limits as much as possible without increasing how many credit cards they have.

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A few years ago I had a little credit report error incident. I just started a new job and was going through a background investigation, which included a review of my credit history. In the course of that review, the investigator noticed that there was an address listing on the report that I hadn’t previously disclosed. The reason I never mentioned the address is because it wasn’t mine.

When he told me, I feared the worst. I thought I was joining the millions of people who have their identity stolen each year. In fact, just a year before that, a friend was telling me how it took him several months to get his identity recovered and even then everything credit-related was a pain. So my mind immediately jumped to ID theft.

Fortunately, it was an isolated, albeit strange, credit report error that was relatively easy to resolve. The error was the addition of an address, a Social Security Number (that differed from my SSN by one digit), and a telephone/cable package. I went through the usual protocols of disputing the information, thinking the onus was on the other party to prove that information was true, but I was wrong.

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With the passing of the CARD Act, credit card companies have been responding by instituting purchase-based annual fees. Before the CARD Act, many issuers were trimming their books of inactive, low-activity, and risky credit card accounts. You may remember American Express offering cardholders a financial incentive to close accounts.

In this environment, there may come a time when you will want to cancel a credit card. A few years ago, canceling a credit card was easy. You called them and told them you wanted to cancel, they try to keep you around, you did that dance, and then diced up your card. Nowadays, you go through the same charade, but now you have to be worried about how the cancellation would impact your credit score! Boo!

So here are some tips on minimizing the impact of canceling any one credit card.

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Whether it’s driving on the highway or surfing on the information superhighway, I’ve been seeing a lot of ads for credit reports and credit scores. With the economy weak, people are looking to play defense and advertising are looking to capitalize. Like I’ve said in the past, checking your credit report annually is one of the best financial things you can do for yourself.

I have one word of warning for you: Don’t ever go to a company that isn’t Experian, Equifax, TransUnion, or Fair Isaac. Never ever.

Here’s why:

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