My goodness have you looked into the various credit card choices that are available today? This one may have a low interest rate, but a ridiculous annual fee, and that one may have no black out dates for air travel, but can only be used every third Wednesday of the month. Or what about the offer you hear – that it offers cash back on specific purchases – but what the heck are those specific purchases anyway?

The credit card choices available today can be so confusing to the average person, so how does one figure out the best credit card to get? If you do an online search of the words credit cards, you will get more responses than you could realistically look at in weeks.

In order to figure out which of the multiple credit card choices that available is the best one(s) for you, first you should probably have a good idea of what your credit rating is. If you do not know, you can easily get this information from any of the major credit rating companies. This can be accomplished in one of two ways, either request it and pay the fee they ask or apply for credit and if your request is denied, the company that denied you will send you a form that will state which one of the major credit rating companies denied you – and they have to send you a free credit report. Knowing before applying for credit is usually your best option.

After you know what your credit score or FICO® Score is, then you can take the time to decide which credit cards you are eligible for. For the purpose of this discussion, we will imagine you have limited to good credit. There are still multiple options that are available for you. Before you begin your search, ask yourself what benefits are important to you. If you are a frequent flyer, especially now with fuel prices what they are and airfare increasing by the day, frequent flyer miles may be critical for you. However, if you do not travel often or fly ever, then maybe earning cash credits, the interest rate on unpaid balances or even a lower annual fee may be the best benefit for you.

Regardless of what your preferred benefits may be, there is a credit card choice out there for you. Remember to pay attention to the small print. Most importantly, understand the entire fee structure including the annual payments, late fees, as well as the interest rate.

Daily advertisements tell the consumer to go to one place or another to obtain free credit scores. Unfortunately, once you are lured onto the site, you will normally discover that indeed you may obtain a free credit report, but the score itself costs a fee. This fee may require a one-time payment or a monthly fee to keep you up to date if there are any changes in your credit.

Regardless of the advertisement or which method you choose for obtaining a copy of your credit report and ultimately the score, it does you no good if you do not know how to read it or what it all means.

Most people do not know what all those mysterious codes next to each entry means or how the information posted weighs into the final calculation to reach that magical number known as your credit score.

Each institution uses a different scale to weigh each item. If you are looking to purchase an automobile for example, the car dealership is going to put more weight on your former automobile loans, vehicle insurance, and outstanding utility bills (if there are any). Their focus will be on items such as previous addresses and length of employment. Automobiles by design are mobile. Therefore, it is much easier to move about with them and leave a lender stuck holding the loan and attempting to repossess a vehicle than with other types of credit.

Items such as outstanding medical bills, or that short period of time where things got behind, will be much less important than knowing where you (or the vehicle) can be found should payment not be made.

A credit card company looks at each item presented in a totally different manner. They are more concerned with the number of credit cards that you already possess. What the open line of credit on each is, frequency of late payments, and the amount of available credit currently being used.

The “unspoken” calculation which weighs heavily is: if this person should suddenly fall ill or be out of work and used all of his/her available credit, would he/she be able to make more than the minimum payments of each card?

Mortgage lenders use a completely different set of eyes for weighing each item than automobile dealerships or credit card companies do. They scrutinize every item carefully and give it a weight that is unique from what other lenders do. The “not so important” illness or divorce that caused a blip previously ignored by the automobile lender or credit card company might be a major issue when obtaining a home loan.

These lenders look to see if the illness may reoccur or if the divorce left huge debts to pay. Frequency of changing jobs or residences may be explainable as being “upwardly mobile” to one lender, while in the mortgage arena those items are considered major red flags of instability.

As with credit card companies, mortgage lenders are concerned with debt to income ratio and what your final numbers are. Debt to income ratio is a fancy way of comparing your monthly debt to your monthly income. When the debt is higher than a specific percentage, regardless of how great your payment history may be, your risk levels rise.

Of course, this is an oversimplification of the entire credit process. However, one important thing to remember where credit is concerned, the more you have, and the higher the risk you become. Little to no credit or bad credit can literally cripple a person’s future.

It can prevent a person from getting specific jobs, apartments, credit cards, or even insurance. Learn what yours is, how to fix or improve it, and the steps you can take to protect it. Ensure that should you decide one day you want or need more credit – you can obtain it at a rate that you can live with.