re: Building Credit Score

On top of the things that have been mentioned I would suggest a site called Credit Karma. You can monitor your credit report there for free and it gives a good estimate of what your credit score is. I don't conisder it a good replacement for getting a report and score directly from the three bureaus but it will give you a good idea of where you stand.

I don't know if it's been mentioned but one thing that will help is having a longstanding credit card or something. Also, having more lines of credit can improve your score. (I wouldn't suggest trying that though because each hard inquiry to open a new line of credit will hurt your score.) Also I believe that the average age of your credit accounts is weighed also so when you open a new account it pulls down the average age of your accounts.

I know the only thing holding my credit score back is the age of my accounts and there's nothing to do about that except for letting time pass and not closing old accounts.