Your credit score affects more than just whether you’ll be granted a loan, mortgage or credit card.  Insurance companies look at the score as a measure of responsibility.  You may pay higher premiums for auto insurance for example if your credit score is lower than someone who has good credit.  Employers review credit reports as a regular part of the employment process.

Use it or lose it If you have credit start using it.  It’s not enough to just establish credit.  That’s only the first hurdle. If you have a VISA start using it.  Lenders not only look to see if another financial institution took the risk of granting credit but look to see if you’ve borrowed money and then repaid it.

Store credit may be the easiest option to start establishing

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Progressive Corp. (PGR) has entered into an agreement with Web.com to provide online marketing facility to its independent insurance agents as more than half of them do not have websites. According to the comScore Online Auto Insurance Report from April 2009, around three-fourths of auto insurance customers shop online and about two-thirds ultimately buy from an agent.

Web.com is a leader in providing online marketing for small businesses. According to the agreement, Progressive’s agent will get a discount on Web.com’s base pricing, a professionally designed website with a unique domain along with real-time agent quoting and servicing platform. In addition, agents will benefit from being listed on all major search engines and directories, access to a scorecard measuring real-time results and website analytics.

Progressive is one of the largest auto insurers in U.S., a leading independent agency writer of private passenger auto coverage, the largest seller of motorcycles

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Worldwide indexes reclaim that losing feeling,  The skinny on those TARP repayments and two curiously conflicting assessments,Four factories for one McMinimum Wage house and plenty more…

“Are things getting worse or are things getting better?” we wondered aloud in yesterday’s edition of the Rude Awakening.

In today’s edition, we provide a few answers – well, not answers, really…just observations from you, the Rude readership. In the column below, we present a few real-world anecdotes from Rude Awakening readers. This narrow sampling of economic observations is hardly scientific, but it may be illuminating nonetheless.

Before we get into these real-world stories, let’s examine a couple of recent stories from Fantasyland - otherwise known as Wall Street. Seven of America’s largest banks repaid their TARP borrowings to the US Treasury yesterday, in the process providing one more occasion for hopeful investors to proclaim the end of the credit crisis.

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