Find out your credit score

Time it takes: 7 minutes

Know how lenders see you. Take seven minutes to download a free credit report at annualcreditreport.com. (For year-round monitoring, get a report from one of the three major credit bureaus every four months.) If you spot an error, notify the bureau (online, by phone or by mail) and the creditor (call and also send a letter). You won't find your credit score here, so when you request a report from Equifax, pay $7.95 for your FICO score, the most commonly used score. The range is 300 to 850 - 700 and above is good.

Raise your credit score

Time it takes: 8 minutes

It takes time to recover from major credit lapses, but you can do two things fast that will improve your credit score. Both will lower the size of your outstanding debt as a percentage of your total borrowing power.

1. Pay down a balance. 2. Call your issuer and ask for a higher credit limit. And don't spend it

NEW YORK (AP) -- Gas prices rose back to $3 a gallon at the pump Friday, following rising futures prices on concerns about tight inventories and potential supply disruptions.

But oil prices fell Friday, reversing earlier gains after weak figures on new home sales ignited fresh concerns about the economy. That gave traders a green light to lock in profits from oil's recent rally.

Light, sweet crude for February delivery fell 62 cents to settle at $96 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Despite Friday's swoon, oil prices have risen 5 percent in a little more than a week.

Retail gas prices, which typically lag the futures market, are widely expected to rise to new record highs in the spring. Analysts think futures investors are anticipating big gains by buying now, driving futures -- and thus pump prices -- higher.

"They're all jumping on the gasoline bandwagon," said Tom Kloza, publisher and chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service, who predicts pump prices will peak between $3.50 and $3.75 a gallon in the spring. The Energy Information Administration recently predicted prices will peak above $3.40 a gallon

NEW YORK (AP) -- Town governments, school districts and other municipalities looking to borrow money got a new option Friday when trying to insure their bonds: billionaire investor Warren Buffett.

Buffett's formation of a bond insurance company provided some validation to an industry that has been battered by fears of collapse in recent weeks.

"If I was thinking of investing in financial guarantors, this would give me comfort," said Donald Light, a senior analyst with Celent. Light owns Berkshire Hathaway shares.

Though analysts said the move by Buffett provides a stamp of approval for the broader business model, which has recently come under fire, shares of Buffett's newest competitors were hammered Friday.

"Any capital new to the space for reinsurance would be a net positive," said Steve Stelmach, an analyst with Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co., in an interview. But if Buffett "uses capital simply as competition, it is a negative," Stelmach said.

MBIA Inc. fell 15.9 percent to close at $18.74 Friday, while Ambac fell 13.8 percent to $25.12. Earlier in the session, MBIA shares hit a 52-week low of $18.43.

The New York Insurance Department expedited the licensing for Berkshire Hathaway Assurance Corp. The state's insurance superintendent, in a statement, said the state was doing what it could to help insurers

Find out how much you need to save each month to reach $500,000, $1 million of $2 million by age 65.

The road to $1 million starts early, but if you're a late bloomer, help is at hand. The information below shows how much you need to save each month to accumulate $500,000, $1 million or $2 million by age 65, along with strategies for achieving that goal. At age 25, you're starting from scratch. At ages 35, 45 and 55, we assume you already have money in savings, on which you're earning 8% annually.

AGE 25

You've saved: $0
To reach $500,000, what you need to save per month: $143
To reach $1 million, what you need to save per month: $286
To reach $2 million, what you need to save per month: $573

Get help from Uncle Sam: You may qualify for a retirement-savings tax credit of 10% to 50% of the amount you contribute to an IRA, 401(k) or other retirement account. The credit can reduce your tax bill by up to $1,000. To qualify, your income must be $25,000 or less if you're single, $37,500 or less if you're

NEW YORK (AP) -- When Citigroup warned in early November that it was likely to write down its portfolio by $8 billion to $11 billion in the fourth quarter because of exposure to bad loans, investors recoiled at the size of the losses. Some now say those early estimates appear drastically understated.

Citigroup Inc. could write off as much as $18.7 billion in the fourth quarter, wrote Goldman analysts William F. Tanona, Betsy Miller and Neil C. Sanyal in a note to investors late Wednesday. If it does, they say, the bank may be forced to lower its dividend by 40 percent.

Citi has about $55 billion in exposure to subprime mortgages, about $43 billion of which are collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, that have mortgages underlying them.

"We still believe it will be a couple of quarters before the current credit crisis is fully digested by the markets," the Goldman analysts wrote.

Already, Citi has been propped up by a $7.5 billion investment from the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, a sovereign wealth fund that in late November bought a 4.9 percent stake in the bank.

But if Citi must write down the value of its portfolio by more than it estimated back in early November -- a

WASHINGTON (AP) -- More than 3 million people will have to wait until February to get their tax refunds because of Congress' late fix to the alternative minimum tax, the IRS said Thursday.

Congress put a one-year freeze on growth of the alternative minimum tax last week, shielding many middle- and upper-middle income taxpayers from first exposure to the tax. But Congress' late action means the Internal Revenue Service won't be able to start processing five AMT-related forms until February, delaying potential refunds for those people until that month.

Between 3 million and 4 million people filed in January for their 2006 taxes using those forms, with many expecting a refund, the IRS said. The average refund was $2,324, the agency said.

"We regret the inconvenience the delay will mean for million of early tax filers, especially those expecting a refund," acting IRS Commissioner Linda Stiff said.

As many as 13.5 million people will have to wait until Feb. 11 to start filing with the five AMT-related forms, but the IRS said filing patterns show only between 3 million to 4 million of those people file during the early tax season anyhow.

The IRS was able to reprogram its computers to begin accepting the seven other AMT-related forms when

WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. factories saw orders for costly manufactured goods rise only marginally in November -- falling short of expectations for a much bigger gain and underscoring the strains on the economy from housing and credit problems.

The Commerce Department reported Thursday that orders for "durable" goods -- products expected to last at least three years -- increased by just 0.1 percent last month. The tiny rise came after durable-goods orders fell by 0.4 percent in October. Economists were hoping for a larger rebound -- a 2.2 percent increase -- in new orders placed at the nation's factories in November. Still, the November rise marked the first increase in durable-goods orders in the last four months.

In other economics news, more people signed up for unemployment benefits last week, a sign that the job market is softening as the economy loses speed.

The Labor Department reported that new applications for unemployment insurance rose by a seasonally adjusted 1,000 to 349,000. Economists had expected new filings for jobless benefits to dip to around 340,000 for last week.

"Now that business spending is also losing momentum, the risk of recession is mounting," said Michael

NEW YORK (AP) -- Oil futures rose Thursday after the government reported larger-than-expected declines in crude and heating oil inventories.

In its weekly inventory report, the Energy Department's Energy Information Administration said oil inventories fell by 3.3 million barrels last week, more than double the 1.3 million barrel decline analysts expected. Inventories of distillates, which include heating oil and diesel fuel, fell by 2.8 million barrels, much more than the expected drop of 800,000 barrels.

"(Heating oil) stocks are just plunging," said Stephen Schork, a trader and analyst in Villanova, Pa.

Crude and heating oil supplies have declined more than expected for several weeks running, exacerbating a perception that supplies may be inadequate to meet winter demand.

Light, sweet crude for February delivery rose 65 cents to settle at $96.62 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange after rising as high as $97.79. Heating oil futures for January delivery rose 3.91 cents to settle at $2.6803 a gallon.

Oil prices also rose on news of the assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and a vow