Part of rebuilding your credit is proving that you can pay your bills on time. If your bad credit episode left you without any credit cards, you’ll have to open new ones.

Credit scores — they’re like report cards for grown-ups. It’s a three-digit “grade” you get on a scale that ranges from 300 to 850. Your score indicates your creditworthiness to potential lenders, banks, landlords, insurance companies, and even to some employers, for instance. I’m sure you know that the higher your score the better.

This list of popular secured credit cards should be a valuable resource for all of you. Going forward, when I review a secured credit card, I’ll rank it and add it to this list so we have a “master list” of secured credit cards.

This has become less “strange” in recent years, but closing your credit cards can hurt your score.

A credit score is either a blessing or a curse cast down upon you from the digital cloud. A score of 740 qualifies you for the best interest rate on a conventional mortgage. A score under 640 means ugly interest, and a number under 620 makes it very hard to get a mortgage at all.