Image: Credit card © Alistair Berg, Digital Vision, Getty Images
There's a lot of worry going around about the FICO credit score.
It can be like a sleeping giant you don't want to wake.  Carry
too much debt, and you could wake the giant and see your score
plummet. Never carry debt, and the giant won't like that either.
Apply for too many credit cards at one time, like a balance
transfer offer and a gas card, and the giant will grunt and roll
over, dropping your credit score a bit in the process. Take out
a car loan, and your credit score will almost certainly take
another hit. We worry, all in the name of making our FICO credit
score as high as humanly possible. (Do you know your credit
scores? Take this MSN Money quiz for an estimate.)  But the FICO
score isn't the make-or-break number everyone thinks it is.
Credit card issuers often make decisions based on two other
scores: your application score and your revenue score. Let's
take a look at the application score.    • What it is: Your
application score, qu