It's Brian Preston, the money guy, restoring order to your financial chaos. Retirement, investing, taxing.

You've got financial questions. He's got financial answers. It's Brian Preston, the money guy.

Welcome, it is June 29, 2006. We're about to wrap up this month of June, and it's still been a little turbulent out there.

We just got news today that the Fed raised rates another quarter of a point, but the market went on fire.

So I'm kind of curious after we get through recording this show and we'll go through the transcript and see what the Fed said.

But before we get into that, let's talk about what's today's show topic. Let's see if I can do my best voiceover voice here. Let's see if I can do this.

Your credit, a powerful purchasing force, if used correctly, or the kryptonite of the American consumer, if used unwisely.

You're wondering why in the world is Brian using this crazy voiceover voice? It's because Superman came out this weekend.

I felt like it was just only appropriate. I am kind of like all the sci-fi movies. I like all the type of Superman comic book type shows, X-Men.

And this was one of those things. I'm kind of excited that it is coming out this weekend plan. I'm going to go view it this weekend.

So it just seemed appropriate to go ahead and do the whole Superman theme type thing.

If I could get away without getting sued, I would even play the Superman theme song in the background.

We even went and looked and downloaded, but I'm just so worried somebody's going to sue us.

We start playing some of this copyrighted music, so we're going to stay away from that.

But today's topic, as I said, is about your credit.

Credit can be such a powerful, powerful thing if used correctly, but it can also cause the demise of many if used inappropriately.

So we're going to be talking about that.

And what we're going to focus on with this topic today, what's going to talk about the power of credit, as I've already mentioned, for both the good and the bad sides of each of it.

Your FICO score and how you can work on your FICO score and whether you have a good FICO score, bad FICO score, and how you can even find out what in the world your FICO score is.

How to get credit reports for free. Notice the key word in that statement was for free.

We always try to do things on the cheap here on the money-guy.com.

And then we're also for the younger listeners, we're going to be talking about how to build credit for the first time borrowers.

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