With the holidays just around the corner, there’s no time like the present to get smart about your credit. Give yourself the gift of good credit by making intelligent decisions this holiday season. After all, good credit is the gift that keeps on giving.

1. Check Your Credit Before the Holidays

A single error on your credit report can take a major toll on your credit score. And the last thing any of us want is to be declined at the register when trying to purchase gifts on a credit card. Before you start shopping, check your credit report to make sure there are no errors. If you spot something that’s wrong, dispute it with the credit bureaus to correct it. You can get a free credit report and score, plus the ability to dispute inaccuracies, at Quizzle.com.

2. Don’t Let the Retail Credit Card Offers Tempt You at Checkout

We’ve all been there. You step up to the register at a retail store with your arms full of gifts and you’re asked if you’d like to save 10 percent off your purchase today by opening a new credit card. There’s nothing wrong with a deal, but the problems often times with these cards are the credit limits are low and the interest rates are high.

When you charge purchases on a low limit card, you may be using a large percentage of the credit that’s available to you on that card – aka, “credit utilization.” When you’re using a higher percentage of your credit – both on individual cards and overall – it signals to creditors and lenders that you may be a higher risk, which is reflected in your credit score.

Also, each time you open a new credit line, your credit score takes a hit. The negative impact becomes even more significant if you’re opening several of these cards in a short period of time.

3. Keep an Eye on Your Credit Limits

When scouring for deals, it’s easy to forget that there is a limit to how much you can charge. By going over your limit, or even getting close to it, you can significantly hurt your credit score.

4. Check Your Interest Rates Before You Shop

Many credit cards hold a variable interest rate and without you even knowing it, your interest rates could go up – even if you’ve been responsible with your credit. That’s why it’s important to know your interest rate on each of the credit cards you might use when shopping during the holidays. If you don’t pay your credit card balances in full each month, charging your purchases to your lowest rate card is your best bet. You’ll save money in interest in the long-run, allowing you to pay down balances faster.

5. Be Especially Vigilant about Identity Theft

Identity theft is prevalent around the holidays, so it’s smart to be especially careful with your credit cards during this time of year. Make sure you get your credit card back after making a purchase and don’t forget the receipt!

When shopping online, look for security symbols – like VeriSign or TRUSTe– on websites to make sure they’re safe, secure and use encryption to protect your personal financial information.

6. Don’t Get Distracted from Your Bill-Paying Duties

Just because you’re busy with holiday parties, decorating the house and gift-shopping, does not excuse you from paying your bills on time in December. Remember: A big piece of your credit score – approximately 35 percent – is determined by how reliably you pay your bills each month. If you miss even one payment, you can significantly damage your credit score.

Make sure to pay at least the minimum payment on each of your bills. If you need to sneak a reminder Post-It into your Advent Calendar to remember, do it! Don’t let the “Season of Giving” give you heartburn in the new year because you let your credit score dip.

7. Only Spend What You Can Afford

If the debt you rack up during the holidays takes you until next year’s holiday season to pay off, you’re spending too much. Set a holiday spending budget, including gifts you plan to buy, and stick with it. If you’ve had a rough year financially, consider making gifts with your own hands. Homemade gifts are often the most thoughtful and memorable gifts you can give someone.

It’s easy to be careless with your credit around the holidays. For many people, it’s the time of year when credit cards get the most mileage. But remember: Your credit, if managed properly, can give you access to big savings and the best interest rates and terms – all year round. That’s why it’s important to protect it 365 days a year.

Looking for more credit tips? The Quizzle Blog’s got you covered:

• 10 Common Myths about Credit Reports and Scores
• Build Credit from Scratch in 5 Easy Steps
• 7 Simple Ways to Improve Your Credit Score
• Understanding Credit Reports and Credit Scores
• How Do Credit Inquiries Affect Your Credit Score?

For a totally free credit score and free credit report, no strings attached, no credit card needed, visit Quizzle.com. Quizzle is the free and easy way to manage your home, money and credit – all in one spot.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/oimax/

Happy Friday! Your Weekly Quizzler is here, chock-full of the week’s best stories about your credit, home and money links straight from the Quizzle Twitter feed:

Home & Money Saving Tips

Digitize Your Coupon Clipping (Suburban Dollar)

With the influx of coupon websites, you can now enjoy the savings of coupons without getting newspaper ink on your hand. Kathryn shares some tips on how to take advantage of coupons online.

Perfect Weddings Can Be Frugal Weddings (Quizzle Blog)

The best advice comes from personal experience. Learn some tricks about planning your wedding on the cheap from Quizzle’s own Angela Burkhart, who is currently planning her own October, 2010 wedding.

Practical Tips for Gift Card Givers and Getters (USA Today)

Gift cards can make fantastic gifts, but not all gift cards are created equally. Before you buy, make sure you check out these pointers to make sure you – and the giftee – are getting what you paid for.

72 Ways to Save Money on Electricity without Spending a Cent (My Next Buck)

Unless you plan making the switch to candlelight, your electric bill isn’t going away. Learn how to save money on that monthly bill and do some good for the Earth while you’re at it.

Start Making Year-End Tax Moves Now and Save Big Money (Generation X Finance)

April may be five months away, but you can make smart money moves now that will save you big time when tax day rolls around.

10 Things Your Baby Doesn’t Need that Can Fund their College Education (Fiscal Geek)

When it comes to your baby, there’s a product for everything. But by forgoing a few luxuries, you could actually stash away enough money to make a dent in the kid’s college fund.

Investing Money & The Stock Market

How to Make Money in 2010: Your Investments (CNN Money, Money Magazine)

Small gains are the name of the game next year. Find out more about investing in 2010, including what to watch, the wild cards and smart plans of action.

Personal Finance & Budgeting

5 Warning Signs You Have Way Too Much Debt (Financial Methods)

If any of these five scenarios sound familiar, you may want to rethink your debt management strategy.

Procrastination: A Money Management Killer (Quizzle Blog)

Mark Twain once said, “Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.” …Except when it comes to smart money management. Don’t let your bad habits of procrastination drain your wallet.

10 Steps to Planning Holiday Spending (Moolanomy)

There are only 48 days left in 2009, which means the end-of-the-year holidays are fast approaching. Learn how to make your holidays – and the inevitable spending – less stressful.

This week’s most interesting articles and blog posts about your home, money and credit – straight from the Quizzle Twitter page:

Home & Money Saving Tips

10 Non-Secrets about Grocery Shopping that Anyone Can Do (Frugal for Life)

Classic money saving tips for grocery shopping.

Personal Finance & Budgeting

How Much to Budget for Car Maintenance? (Five Cent Nickel)

The costs of car maintenance can easily throw off your personal budget if you’re not careful. Matt at FiveCentNickel gives some advice on how to make sure that car repair bill doesn’t sneak up on you.

How’s Your Net Worth Doing? (Free Money Finance)

Is it time you did a net work check-up?

Real Estate & Home Value

5 Tips for Finding Your Perfect Home (StyleCaster)

Apartment hunting can be stressful and exhausting. But if you approach the process knowing what you should consider and what questions to ask, you can find your dream home in short order.

How to Earn Income for the Rest of Your Life: The Good, Bad and Ugly of Annuities (Generation X Finance)

This is annuities 101. If you don’t know what annuities are, how they work or how you can use them to support yourself for the rest of your life, this is your post.

Senate and House Approve Home Buyers Credit and Unemployment Benefits Extension (Quizzle Blog)

Great news for first-time home buyers this week! The U.S. House and Senate passed a bill to extend the first-time home buyers tax credit until April 30, 2010. President Barack Obama will sign the bill into law Friday.

The Federal Open Market Committee (Fed) – or as we affectionately call them, the “smarty pants” of the banking world – announced today that it will again hold its Fed funds rate at the 0% – 0.25% target range. (What the heck is the Fed funds rate and why should I care?)

While the Fed decided to hold the key rate at its current range, they are making other significant changes, according to Quicken Loans Chief Economist Bob Walters.

“The Fed today repeated that it intends to maintain its Fed Funds rate at exceptionally low levels for an extended period,” said Walters.  “However, the fact is that the Fed is making substantial cuts to its investments in the secondary market, which certainly signals a departure from the status quo.  These actions alone have the ability to push Treasuries and interest rates higher.”

The following is an official press release from the Fed regarding its decision today, plus a translation of all the financial gobbledygook from Bob Walters:

—

FEDERAL RESERVE Press Release
Release Date: March 18, 2009

For immediate release
Bob: Now

Fed: Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in September suggests that economic activity has continued to pick up. Conditions in financial markets were roughly unchanged, on balance, over the intermeeting period. Activity in the housing sector has increased over recent months. Household spending appears to be expanding but remains constrained by ongoing job losses, sluggish income growth, lower housing wealth, and tight credit. Businesses are still cutting back on fixed investment and staffing, though at a slower pace; they continue to make progress in bringing inventory stocks into better alignment with sales.

Although economic activity is likely to remain weak for a time, the Committee anticipates that policy actions to stabilize financial markets and institutions, fiscal and monetary stimulus, and market forces will support a strengthening of economic growth and a gradual return to higher levels of resource utilization in a context of price stability.

Bob: The Fed was in a darn jolly mood when they wrote this paragraph. They are saying that they are seeing the economy starting to do better. Even though they are seeing businesses still laying people off, they see those businesses getting closer to being “right sized” for the current market we live in. The last jargony sentence means they think all the money they’ve been pumping into the economy will slowly make things better without increasing prices a lot.

Fed: With substantial resource slack likely to continue to dampen cost pressures and with longer-term inflation expectations stable, the Committee expects that inflation will remain subdued for some time.

Bob: “Resource slack” means “I don’t have enough business to justify hiring more peeps”. The Fed says as long as that’s the case, prices of stuff aren’t gonna rise.

Fed: In these circumstances, the Federal Reserve will continue to employ a wide range of tools to promote economic recovery and to preserve price stability. The Committee will maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 1/4 percent and continues to anticipate that economic conditions, including low rates of resource utilization, subdued inflation trends, and stable inflation expectations, are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for an extended period.

To provide support to mortgage lending and housing markets and to improve overall conditions in private credit markets, the Federal Reserve will purchase a total of $1.25 trillion of agency mortgage-backed securities and about $175 billion of agency debt. The amount of agency debt purchases, while somewhat less than the previously announced maximum of $200 billion, is consistent with the recent path of purchases and reflects the limited availability of agency debt. In order to promote a smooth transition in markets, the Committee will gradually slow the pace of its purchases of both agency debt and agency mortgage-backed securities and anticipates that these transactions will be executed by the end of the first quarter of 2010.

The Committee will continue to evaluate the timing and overall amounts of its purchases of securities in light of the evolving economic outlook and conditions in financial markets. The Federal Reserve is monitoring the size and composition of its balance sheet and will make adjustments to its credit and liquidity programs as warranted.

Bob: The Fed is again saying that they are going to keep firing all their guns – spending giant wads of dough on mortgage bonds, cash for clunkers, housing credits, roads, earwax museums, etc – and they will also keep short term rates low (at basically 0%) for quite some time too.

The Fed did say they will start slowing down the pace of their purchases of mortgage bonds and they expect to stop those purchases in early 2010. However, they did throw out some hope that they might continue buying mortgage bonds when they said,

“The Committee will continue to evaluate the timing and overall amounts of its purchases of securities in light of the evolving economic outlook and conditions in financial markets. The Federal Reserve is monitoring the size and composition of its balance sheet and will make adjustments to its credit and liquidity programs as warranted.”

Fed: Voting for the FOMC monetary policy action were: Ben S. Bernanke, Chairman; William C. Dudley, Vice Chairman; Elizabeth A. Duke; Charles L. Evans; Erin M Sherenco; Donald L. Kohn; Jeffrey M. Lacker; Dennis P. Lockhart; Daniel K. Tarullo; Kevin M. Warsh; and Janet L. Yellen.

Bob: Everyone agreed!

In a report about how to deal with rising credit cards rates, TODAY financial editor, Jean Chatzky, suggests viewers visit Quizzle.com to get a totally free credit score, no catches, no trial subscriptions, no credit card required:

Watch the entire video on the Today Show website.