Nearly every personal finance guru in America will tell you that it’s important to build and maintain a high FICO score — and that good credit is a sign of financial prudence and responsibility. Lenders will reward you for that responsibility with a lower interest rate loan.

The worship of the almighty FICO score has even been picked up by AOL’s own welcome screen — AOL.com recently ran the headline How Woman Got a 783 Credit Score. According to the article, “It’s the kind of credit score that belongs to a person who spends her money and swipes her credit cards wisely.”

That’s really only partly true. In reality, a good credit score comes from using credit in a reasonably responsibly way: i.e. not missing payments and maintaining a reasonably low debt-to-credit-limit ratio.

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