If you don't have credit now, you can quickly establish credit with a secured credit card. Check with your bank or credit union. They'll probably be able to help you with this. Then, once you've made timely payments for at least 6 months, you'll have established a positive credit history because secured cards are reported in the same way unsecured ones are. Doing this is a good, risk-free way of establishing credit. Your credit line is whatever amount you open the account with.

If you have a spouse or close relative with good credit, you may be able to get added to their credit card accounts as an authorized user. Then, you'd be able to benefit from their timely payments because the credit line and history also appear on your credit report. Fair Isaac Corp., the company that invented the current credit scoring system, had pulled out authorized users last year in response to scams of people brokering relationships with strangers who have good credit.

Credit-repair firms became matchmakers between those with weak and strong credit histories. Consumers with lousy records paid $1,000 or more to be added as an authorized user for a few months on the card of a person with a high credit score.

But Fair Isaac's original solution "was probably an overreaction," said Evan Hendricks, author of "Credit Scores & Credit Reports." More than 50 million consumers are authorized users on someone else's card. It was possible under the change that some consumers' scores could go down if they were authorized users on a card with a strong credit history, Hendricks said. Fair Isaac also estimated that up to 3 million consumers could have lost their score altogether.

Fair Isaac's experts came up with a way that would keep authorized user accounts in the scoring formula yet would thwart attempts by credit-repair firms to game the system. How they did it is a secret, Tom Quinn, vice president of global scoring solutions for Fair Isaac. So, be sure that you are a spouse or what would logically before trying this.

However, if the original card holder misses a payment, it also ends up on your credit report. And, Liz Pulliam Weston, who wrote Your Credit Score: How to Fix, Improve and Protect the 3-Digit Number that Shapes Your Financial Future (2004, Prentice Hall), not all information providers (creditors) report the credit on the authorized user's credit reports. Some do, some don't. It all depends on the creditor.

Borrowers with accounts that were 60 days or more past due in the last 12 months have a greatly reduced chance of being approved, unless they have a solid explanation and other compensating factors. Borrowers with isolated 30 day late payments should still be eligible provided the rest of their accounts are paid satisfactorily. Visit Home Equity Line of Credit online to set a secured lien that provides quick access to cash.