Each week the NZ Herald's Cooking the Books podcast tackles a different money problem. Today, it's how to take control of your credit score. Hosted by Frances Cook.

Credit scores are important, but it can be hard to figure out how important they are in our part of the world.

A lot of personal finance advice comes from the United States, where their credit system is entirely different.

Trying to copy that here could see you spending a lot on credit card fees, with no reward.

So for the latest Cooking the Books podcast I talked to Tom Hartmann from Sorted, about how to understand our system.

We discussed what a credit score is used for, how you can check yours and whether you really need a credit card in order to have a good score.

If you have a question about this podcast, or question you'd like answered in the next one, come and talk to me about it. I'm on Facebook here https://www.facebook.com/FrancesCookJournalist/ Instagram here https://www.instagram.com/francescooknz/ and Twitter here https://twitter.com/FrancesCook