My FICO credit score keeps going up and down. I pay most of our bills with the card I have had for well over 10 years. The card is paid off every two weeks. I am never late on any accounts. I have no debt other than my house, which will be paid off this year. I monitor my accounts for fraud. Why is my FICO credit score like a bouncing ball?

The federal consumer watchdog is now taking your complaints about credit reports, and that may speed up an often frustrating and slow process for consumers.

My husband and son have the same name, except my son is the 3rd. My son is in the U.S. Air Force and is only 20 years old. When applying for a loan to purchase his first car, he found out he has a judgment on his credit report of $1,879.

Manufacturing is also showing signs of developing cracks

The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) is a federal law that regulates how credit reporting agencies use your information. Enacted in 1970 and substantially amended in the late 1990s and again in 2003, the FCRA restricts who has access to your sensitive credit information and how that information can be used.

WASHINGTON -- With the resurgence of tighter underwriting standards, some mortgage-market observers have been predicting that lenders would once again rely more on a borrower's overall worthiness and less on credit scores.

Lenders are giving more credence to each of the so-called Five Cs -- character, capacity, collateral, capital and credit. But your credit score, which is a numerical snapshot of your credit history at a single point in time, is still paramount, said David Chung, managing director of Credit- Xpert, a Towson, Md., firm that sells credit-management tools to lenders.