We talk a lot about taking a common sense approach to repair your credit, but we’ve never really laid out our basic do-it-yourself version. We thought we’d remedy that today. You know, just for variety.

1. Make a Plan

Get all your credit reports, your bills, and your bank statements out on a table and take a hard look at them. If you don’t have any of these things handy, go online and get a copy of the most recent ones.

Go through that credit report with a fine-toothed comb. Look at the items that are hurting your credit particularly, and highlight any ones that seem wrong or that are having an impact that seems way out of proportion to the offense.

What, you don’t like snookums? How about sweetheart? Love interest? Significant other? Partner in canoodling? That idiot who you’ve been fighting with about finances lately?

Ooh, that last one got a little harsh. A lot of couples ARE arguing about finances these days, and it always sucks.

Here’s the thing when you’re in a tough financial situation with someone you care about. You want to make up from your fight by doing something nice for them. So you go out and spend money on a present or a nice dinner out or tickets to a show you know they want to see.

Whereupon they yell at you for spending money unnecessarily and you get to have the fight again. Um, no thank you.

Never fear. We’ll have you calling that budget-inept idiot your snookums again in no time. Except maybe you don’t want to call them that. The more I look at the word, the more creepy it sounds.

Here are five things to do the next time you want to do something sweet for your (insert appropriately sappy nickname here).

Your credit’s lousy, and somehow it just got worse. You’re not even sure how it happened. You’ve been making your payments, you’re not a loser. Here’s 5 Things that screw up your credit that you probably don’t know about.

#1 Closing Old Credit Cards

When you finally pay off that credit card, it seems like the smart thing to do is just chop it into tiny pieces, call up the company, and close it down completely. No temptation, no consequences. You are finally free of the credit card! It has no power over you. You are no longer being drawn to the Dark Side.

Kids these days. With their iPods and their Xboxes and their cellphone texting. Overdeveloped fingers and underdeveloped social skills. You disobedient rugrats, get offa my lawn!

Annnnnnd apparently I’m an old man waving a cane from my porch rocking chair. But it’s true that kids have gotten highly dependent on their technology, and they may not take it well when you have to cut down on luxuries like cable and cell phone allowances.

See it as an opportunity. Through no fault of your own, your kids have to do without technology. This means they could spend time doing other things. Like . . . gasp! spending time with their families.