Do you remember the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act? Probably not, so here’s a quick refresher. Signed into law by President Obama in 2010, the Dodd-Frank Act brought sweeping change to how financial markets are regulated in the United States.

Included in the act was a well-known provision called the “Risk-Based Pricing Rule”, which entitled many consumers to obtain free credit scores if they were either declined credit or offered less than favorable terms. If the lender didn’t provide a free score, they were required to at least send a notice that allowed applicants to obtain free credit reports instead.

Throughout the financially tumultuous past few years, the credit card industry has been the subject of a great deal of attention in the press, Congress and the court of public opinion. The system admittedly was broken. Shady credit card companies, hiding behind a conspicuous lack of transparency, were using bait-and-switch tactics and confusing policies to take advantage of their customers. Now that the Credit CARD Act of 2009 has eliminated most of these issues, we can again being to appreciate just how useful credit cards can be. So, without further ado, 8 reasons why you should use a credit card as long as you trust yourself to spend wisely.

1. Credit building

There has recently been a great deal of talk about rules proposed by the Federal Reserve that seek to require credit card companies to consider the merits of applicants based on individual rather than household income. These rules, critics contend, stand to significantly affect stay-at-home mothers by preventing them from establishing credit history in their own names, which would be extremely important to garnering a loan, renting or buying a property, and/or landing a job in the case of divorce or the death of a spouse.

Given that 2010 Census figures show men to be the sole breadwinners in 28.2% of couples with children under the age of 18 and women to be the only earners in about 4% of such families, roughly 7.3 million women and 963,000 men would face a difficult time garnering access to credit if the claims made by the rules’ detractors prove to have merit.

Your credit score is important. You’ve heard it a thousand times, from your parents, financial advisors, TV advertisements, and seemingly everyone in between. They are, of course, correct. Your credit score impacts how much you will pay for a credit card, mortgage, or any number of loans. Many things affect your credit score, but there are also numerous factors that play no role in how this all-important number is computed. Here are twelve things that you don’t need to worry about when it comes to establishing a good credit score.

Anything not in your credit report - There is a wide range of information in your credit report, including payment history, level of indebtedness, length of credit history, and types of credit used. Your credit score won’t take into account anything outside of the credit report.

Knowing when and how to dispute accounts on your credit report can make a huge difference in getting inaccurate information removed from your credit profile. Despite some promises to the contrary that you might come across, dispute letters are not the be-all-end-all of the credit repair process. There is no special formula to writing a carefully-worded argument that will convince the credit bureaus to drop your bad credit history as soon as they receive it.

Yet this myth continues to persist, so I thought I’d take the time to set the record straight on disputing your bad credit history. The trick to writing dispute letters that work is that there is no trick; it’s about knowing how and when to use them.

I received an e-mail just the other day from a nice woman living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (Go Pack!) who wanted advice about efficiently improving credit standing. You see, her son was a senior in college and had opened a 0% APR credit card because he thought it sounded too good to pass up. He then proceeded to rack up charges which he could not pay for. However, instead of telling his parents about his credit card debt and asking for help, he just ignored the situation, hoping it would go away. After all, he was just a kid and could probably say “I’m sorry, I didn’t know any better,” and all would be forgiven, right? Well, that seemed to be the case for a couple weeks until more and more letters started coming from his issuer using words like “past due” and “account suspended.”

At this point, the young man (whom we’ll call Sean) finally consulted his parents. “What should I do?” he wondered. They told him that he needed to become current on his bill in order to avoid falling deeper into delinquency and incurring more significant credit score damage. Since Sean didn’t have much money of his own, his parents loaned him the cash, effectively closing the account, under the condition that he find a job at school so that he could pay them back.

I recently got a call from a college friend who wanted advice on how to get approved for the best credit card possible . He said he had applied and applied but for some reason had still not been given use of a single card. What should he do differently, he wondered, when applying for cards in the future?

My advice to him: immediately stop applying and open a secured credit card because it provides both guaranteed approval and a safe way to rebuild credit.

As we all know, the Great Recession has deeply affected consumers credit scores, and therefore, their access to credit. A recent study from FICO, the largest credit scoring company, shows that an increasing number of consumers fall into the bad credit category. The most recent count shows that a whopping 25.5 percent of consumers have FICO credit scores below 599 – that’s nearly 43.4 million people who are considered high-risk customers for lenders.

What makes these numbers worse is that they are likely to grow in coming months, as financial missteps may not be reflected in credit scores for several months. With 26 million people out of work or underemployed according to the Department of Labor, there are a lot of people struggling to make payments without an income.

No one in America today is immune from identity theft – thieves continue to come up with new ways to steal the information they want.

Stealing your purse or wallet is, of course, the simplest method, but since you’ll notice that and cancel your credit cards, it’s also the least lucrative. Therefore, they prefer methods that you won’t catch unless you’re keeping a close eye on both your credit accounts and your credit report.

This is a guest post by Joshua Heckathorn, who runs Creditnet.com and holds an MBA and B.S. in Finance. Creditnet is a free resource for anyone who wants to learn more about credit or debt and compare hundreds of the best credit cards online. When Josh isn’t glued to the screen of his Mac, you’re bound to find him at the nearest rock-climbing wall or sushi joint around Seattle.

It’s been just over a month since new rules took effect requiring free credit report sites to prominently disclose that there’s only one place to truly get your credit report for free—AnnualCreditReport.com.

Because of the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure (CARD) Act of 2009, the process of getting a credit card is going to drastically change for people under 21 years of age.  Starting on February of 2010, people under 21 will not be allowed to get a credit card without a co-signer or proof that they can repay their credit card debt.  At Wallet Blog we have already made it clear that this part of the credit card law is completely unfair and ridiculous as it singles out people under 21 years of age for special treatment, even though they are legally adults.  

No matter what politicians decide, credit history is going to continue being a critical factor in determining loan amounts and loan interest rates (as it should be).  However, since it is now harder for people under 21 to get credit cards, they will have less time to build up their credit history and will be at a disadvantage for anything that requires a credit check (like getting a loan or even renting an apartment).

There has been a lot of press surrounding the release of Fair Isaac’s new credit scoring system, FICO 08, and in my opinion the new FICO has been overhyped.   Nevertheless, both consumers and creditors should be glad to have it since it is a marginal improvement in the critical area of credit risk analysis.

The benefit of an improvement in this area must be understood in light of the credit industry’s reliance on the shared responsibility of all borrowers. In such a system, even the most responsible borrower suffers due to flagrantly irresponsible behavior by others.  Wide spread credit problems, then, have a disastrous effect for all borrowers—those who pay their bills on time as well as those who don’t.  Right now, the general condition of credit throughout America is hurt by the awarding of loans to individuals who can’t pay them back.  Any improvement in this area will better separate people who are good credit risks from bad so that banks can do better in distinguishing who should get a loan.  Ultimately, this leads to fewer losses for the banks and allows them to pass savings on to borrowers who are reliable.