EVERY WEEK, YOU’RE allowed to get a free copy of your credit report from each of the three major credit bureaus: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. Your all-important credit score is based on the information in these reports. To view your three reports, go to AnnualCreditReport.com. It’s a good idea to check your credit reports at least once a year, especially if you plan to borrow a large sum to buy, say, a house or car.

THE INTEREST RATE you’re charged on a loan will likely bear some relationship to the current inflation rate. Prevailing interest rates are typically above inflation, so that lenders make money, even after the corrosive impact of inflation is factored in. In the case of mortgages and car loans, the premium over inflation may be relatively modest. In the case of credit cards, it can be huge.
That might make high inflation seem like a major enemy,

TOO MUCH DEBT HELPED trigger the 2008 financial crisis. Some 17 years later, the picture is much brighter. Here’s what the latest statistics tell us:

Every three months, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York puts out a report on household debt. Borrowing had soared ahead of 2008’s financial crisis, only for American families to shed debt in the years that followed, as they paid back the money they borrowed and also defaulted on loans.

WHAT TAX INFORMATION should you file away—and what other steps should you take to keep your finances from sprawling out of control? Here are six pointers:

Keep seven years of tax returns, including supporting materials. The IRS has three years to audit your tax return or six years if it suspects substantial underreporting of income. What if you have been playing fast and loose with your taxes? You probably shouldn’t throw anything away.
Keep cost-basis information for assets held in your taxable account.

IF YOUR INCOME IS high enough, between 50% and 85% of your Social Security retirement benefit may be taxable. Don’t be confused: There isn’t an 85% tax rate on Social Security. Rather, we’re talking about 85% of your benefit being subject to federal income taxes.
Will you get hit with this tax? Start by calculating your combined income, which is your adjusted gross income, plus any municipal bond interest and half your Social Security benefit.

WHEN DRAWING DOWN a portfolio in retirement, the standard advice is to start with your taxable account, next turn to traditional retirement accounts and, finally, tap any Roth accounts. That way, you let traditional retirement accounts grow tax-deferred for longer and allow your Roth accounts to grow tax-free for longer still.
While that’s generally good advice, you may want to tweak it. Retirement can prove surprisingly taxing, especially once you turn age 73 and start taking required minimum distributions from your retirement accounts.

IF YOU EVER FIND yourself with a year when you pay no income tax, don’t celebrate. Instead, rue the wasted opportunity.
Imagine it’s December, you have been out of work all year and you have almost no taxable income. Or let’s say you just retired, you haven’t yet claimed Social Security and you are looking at a year with no money owed to Uncle Sam. To take advantage of these low-income years, you might convert part of your traditional IRA to a Roth IRA,

YOU KNOW WHAT SORT of portfolio you want, thanks to the chapters on portfolio building, investing and financial markets. What’s next? Once you’ve settled on your asset allocation, you need to consider your so-called asset location: Which investments should you hold in your retirement accounts and which in your taxable account? The goal is to minimize your investment tax bill by keeping investments that generate a lot of immediately taxable income in your retirement accounts,

IF YOU’RE IN A HIGH income tax bracket, buying tax-free municipal bonds in your taxable account might seem like a no-brainer. But there’s a strategy that could give you a better return: Use your taxable account to pursue a tax-efficient stock strategy, such as investing in stock index funds, while buying corporate bonds within your retirement account.
The corporate bonds should have a higher yield than tax-free munis and, because you’re buying them in a retirement account,

IF YOU OWN A STOCK in a taxable account that falls in value, you can take some of the sting out of that loss by selling your shares, realizing a capital loss and then using that loss to reduce your annual tax bill. A good idea? Problem is, selling means giving up any chance of making back the loss.
Many folks aren’t keen to do that, so they often look to buy back the shares.

GOT MUTUAL FUNDS IN your regular taxable account? You can potentially get taxed either because of what the fund does or because of what you do.
Let’s start with the former. Each year, a mutual fund is required by law to distribute virtually all of the interest and dividends that it earns, as well as any realized capital gains. Those are bundled together into periodic income and capital gains distributions. When these distributions are made,

TAXABLE-ACCOUNT investors are encouraged to hold winning investments for more than a year, so that the appreciation is taxed at the long-term capital gains rate, rather than at the higher income tax rate. But arguably, you should set your sights not on 12 months, but on 20 years and preferably longer.
Why? By holding onto a winning investment, you defer the capital gains tax bill. But to milk the most out of this tax-deferred growth,

THE TAX CODE IS designed to encourage folks to save and invest. That’s one reason for the wide array of retirement accounts. But it also explains the preferential tax treatment given to stocks and other longer-term investments held in regular taxable accounts. That preferential tax treatment shows up in two ways.
First, if you buy, say, a stock that appreciates in value and you hold that stock for more than a year, it’s taxed as a long-term capital gain.

WITH A RETIREMENT account, your investments grow tax-deferred, so you don’t have to worry about tax bills until retirement. But with a taxable account, trading too much or buying investments that pay a lot of immediately taxable interest can mean a heap of pain at tax time.
To avoid that pain, consider four strategies, which are discussed in the sections that follow. First, focus on generating long-term capital gains by hanging onto your individual stocks or stock funds for more than a year—preferably much more.

TAX-DEFERRED ANNUITIES come in two types: fixed and variable. Historically, fixed annuities have been pretty straightforward. You get a specified yield for the term of the annuity. Thus, it’s a simple matter of deciding whether the yield seems attractive compared to the alternatives, whether the issuing insurance company appears to be financially strong and whether you’re willing to lock up your money in the annuity structure until age 59½.
But picking among fixed annuities has grown more complicated,