Your FICO score is one of life's most important numbers, right up there with your cholesterol count, your blood pressure, weight and age. It is not only checked out by potential lenders, but also by landlords, employers and others. Not only will it determine if you get your business loan, it will also be a major factor in determining your loan's interest rate.

FICO scores range from 300-850; above 700 is considered very good; above 720 and you'll get the lowest possible interest rate on a loan. Between 720 and 675, the rate will be okay but not the best. A score below 600 (or in some cases below 675) signals high risk to lenders. Your credit score is based on five pieces of information:

(1) Your payment history (35%.) This includes how often you made late payments and if you've declared bankruptcy. Timely payments help your score; late payments are obviously harmful.

(2) How much you owe (30%). This includes balances on all accounts as well as how many of your accounts actually have balances. It also calculates how much you owe in proportion to how much credit is available to you. In other words, how close you are to your credit limits.

(3) The length of your credit history (15%). Obviously the longer you have managed credit, the better.

(4) How much of your credit is new credit (10%). Applying for new credit temporarily lowers your score about 5 points.

(5) Types of credit (10%). This includes how many different kinds of credit you have (credit cards, auto loans, mortgages, business loans, etc.).

You can get your credit score for free from My FICO (http://www.myfico.com/) as part of a 30-day free trial of the "FICO Score Watch." If you don't cancel within 30 days, you're in for an $89.95/year fee.

TIP: My FICO also has several packages that include your score and credit reports from the agencies for various prices. These "deals" and their cost are continually changing.

You can also get your full credit report (but not your score) from each of the three credit reporting companies for free once every twelve months from: http://www.annualcreditreport.com/; or call: 877-322-8228. Having your report in hand makes it possible to boost your score if you spot and correct errors, such as accounts listed as open long after you've closed them.

To repeat, credit scores are not trivial. They make a huge difference. A person with a score under 600 might pay 3 percentage points more on a mortgage than someone with a score above 700. (Examples of what rates are offered to people with what scores are spelled out on the MyFICO web site.) And people with good scores receive better credit card offers.

Stay Tuned...next week: Six ways to boost your FICO score.

In the meanwhile, during the week, read: "Credit Education" at: www.MyFICO.com. The Web site has other downloadable brochures on your rights under the Fair Debt Collection Act (FDCPA) as well as calculators to help you figure out what kind of loan you need, how much credit you might be available to you, whether you would benefit by consolidating your debt and tax savings.