1. Your score will drop if you check your credit - Fortunately, this one is definitely not true.Checking your own report and score is counted as a "soft inquiry" and doesn't harm your credit at all. Only "hard inquiries" from a lender or creditor, made when you apply for credit, can bring your credit score down a few points. Worried about damaging your credit while shopping around for a loan? Multiple inquiries for same purpose within a short amount of time (a few weeks) are grouped together into a less damaging period of inquiry.

2. Closing old accounts will improve your credit score - To close or not to close, that is question. Many people advocate closing old and inactive accounts as a way for improving your credit. In most cases, closing accounts will actually have opposite effect. Canceling old credit accounts can lower yourcredit score by making your credit history appear shorter. Think twice before closing oldest account on your credit report. If you want to reduce your levels of available credit, ask for your credit limits to be reduced or close newer accounts instead.

I was reading "A Modern Infant Armada", a humor column in Maclean's Magazine written by a fellow humor columnist. Writing about it now is a bit like a painter painting another painter or a singer singing about another singer (but it not like a cook cooking another cook.).

David Russell (yes, another humor columnist named David) laughs at his neighbor for parking both cars in driveway to make room in garage for four strollers for just one child. I laughed with him. Four strollers for just one baby is ridiculous, right?

However, David Russell becomes a parent himself, a condition that afflicts many unsuspecting homo sapiens, and he concludes that a call to his neighbor is warranted: "I need to see if he can help me get a fleet rate."

"Traitor!" I cried out. "Stroller monger!"

"Who's a traitor?" my wife asked as she walked in room. "And just what is a stroller monger."

I resisted obvious answer – that a stroller monger is somebody who mongs strollers. "David Russell. He says that one stroller is enough for any child, but then he decides to buy an entire fleet."

"Say, we could have saved a bundle if we had applied for a fleet rate," my wife mused.

"What? We don't have four strollers."

My wife smiled. It was a sweet smile you could just fall in love with...if you did not know that it meant, "Oh yes we do!"

"We do not."

"My wife took out her counting fingers. "First there is car seat," she said, pressing down first finger. "We snap it into stroller base whenever we go anywhere."

"OK, that's one."

"Then there is SUV," she said, pressing down on a second finger. The "SUV" is a full sized stroller. We bought it when we were still squeezing it on a downtown apartment. With no storage space, it stood in entrance area, blocking our path to kitchen and any hope of escaping if place caught fire. The SUV is Hummer of strollers.

"OK, that is a stroller, I will grant you. But that's just two."

"We also have fold-up stroller," my wife said, pressing down a third finger.

"But she's not even using it yet."

"She will soon and we have it now," my wife pointed out. "Then there is old fold-up stroller we kept as a backup. That makes four."