If you've got bad credit you can still get a credit card. You'll just pay more, and the terms of your card deal will be much stiffer than the average cardholder has to deal with.

But handle that deal and you can begin to rebuild your credit and get back to better and better card deals.
Some of you don't have really bad credit, you just don't have good credit. Some of you are just establishing credit (maybe it's the first time ever dealing with credit), others of you have had bad credit but are beginning to make headway into restoring a good credit name.

A credit union may offer the best deals for people with damaged credit.
People with spotless credit reports obviously get the best deals. In most cases you will find that your rates, fees, penalties, charges and credit limits (you may have to start with something as low as $500) will be worse in relation to how far from perfect your credit record is.

Cuomo: ‘It appears that student loan scams don’t end at graduation'

ALBANY, N.Y. - New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has broadened his student loan investigation to alumni associations nationwide that steer students to loan consolidation companies.

Cuomo issued 90 subpoenas and letters to alumni groups, including those representing graduates from The Juilliard School in New York, the University of Illinois, the University of California at Riverside and San Jose State University, Cuomo said.

All the groups had agreements or relationships with lender Nelnet, based in Lincoln, Neb., he said.

Cuomo is asking whether the alumni groups that endorsed loan consolidation companies received any benefit or payments from lenders. Cuomo also wants to determine whether students were informed of any benefits paid to an association before they chose Nelnet.

“Unfortunately, it appears that student loan scams don’t end at graduation,” Cuomo said. He has released no information on any of the relationships.

Loan consolidation allows borrowers to repackage debt — often held by several banks or lenders and covering undergraduate and graduate studies at different schools — into a single loan.