The new year brings a fresh opportunity to improve your finances, and that includes making wiser use of credit, debit and checking accounts. Here are some tips and observations that could prove helpful over the course of 2012.

If credit improvement is on your radar this year, evaluate the key factors that can influence your score. there are different types of credit scores, calculated by various lenders and other financial firms. but in general they all reward consumers who pay bills on time and keep debts manageable.

For instance, 35 percent of FICO credit scores depend on payment history, so it helps a lot if you pay bills on time. Another 30 percent hinges on balances owed, so if you keep your debts under control, that’s a positive. the other key factors are the length of your credit history (the longer the better), the amount of new credit (apply for loans sparingly) and the types of credit used (avoid overconcentration in one type of loan).

It’s hard to boost your score quickly, so beware of credit-repair firms that promise quick fixes. You can recover from red marks, but it will typically take years.

For example, if you’re 30 days late on a mortgage payment, expect it to take anywhere from nine months to three years for your score to recover fully, according to a FICO analysis. Short sales and foreclosures typically take three to seven years, while credit scores usually don’t fully recover from a bankruptcy for five to 10 years. People with higher initial scores require the longest time to recover, which makes sense because they have more ground to make up. also worth noting: the impact from any problem will diminish over time.

FICO suggests several steps to improve your credit, such as paying down debts and checking your credit reports periodically, for free, at annualcreditreport.com because the information contained in reports is used in credit scoring. also, consider setting up account alerts that warn you when payments are due.

Higher credit scores translate to better rates on loans and wider credit availability.

Checking accounts can carry many types of fees, so it’s smart to review what you are charged at least once a year. Alex Matjanec, co-founder of MyBankTracker.com, suggests asking for your bank’s fee schedule, which he said might be easier to obtain in person from a teller than trying to find online.

Consumers face up to 49 different types of fees on checking-related accounts, Matjanec said, though they don’t apply on every account or at every bank. These range from fairly common ones, such as those for overdraft charges, wire transfers, low balances and out-of-network ATM use, to less obvious ones, such as replacing a debit card, having multiple online users and undoing or reversing a deposit.

Also, Matjanec said, more banks are imposing fees for things you don’t conduct online, such as checking your balances over the phone. some banks also charge extra for added services such as letting you peek at pending transactions before they’re processed.

Conversely, more banks are rewarding customers who maintain high deposits or conduct a lot of investment transactions. Banks are adopting a fee-and-reward model similar to that used by airlines, Matjanec said.

The bottom line, he said, is that you need to make sure you’re in an account that makes sense for your circumstances, which might have changed over time.

For example, if you opted for a basic checking account when you got out of college but now earn a lot more money, it might pay to upgrade to one that rewards customers for keeping higher balances.

Get connected electronically, and set up alerts and other safeguards that can prevent fees and other problems. For example, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine suggests minimizing bounced-check and overdraft fees by linking your checking account to a savings account or home-equity line of credit at the same financial institution.

Also, the magazine recommends setting up e-mail and cellphone alerts, which can be tailored to warn when your balance is low so you can minimize or avoid fees for non-sufficient funds. In addition, alerts can be used to warn when your online-account identification, password or mailing address have changed, because those can be symptoms of fraud or identity theft.

If you’re unhappy with your bank’s fees, consider transferring to a credit union. Credit unions, which are run as not-for-profit cooperatives, tend to charge somewhat lower fees than banks and often pay a bit more interest on deposit accounts.

The four dozen credit unions operating in Arizona count roughly 1.5million members out of a statewide population of more than 6million. “So there’s room for growth,” said Scott Earl, president and chief executive officer of the Mountain West Credit Union Association, a Phoenix-based group that represents credit unions in Arizona, Colorado and Wyoming.

However, credit unions haven’t yet seen a membership spike from people upset with big banks and wanting to transfer their accounts. In part, this likely reflects the low-interest-rate environment, which has narrowed the rate differential between what banks and credit unions offer, Earl said.

On average, credit-union customers get roughly an $80-a-year better deal compared with banks, Earl said, reflecting what they earn on deposits and pay in interest and fees. but as recently as 2007, the gap was around $350.

Look at your student loans, and seek guidance if you’re having trouble making payments. Student-loan debt now exceeds that for credit cards, and a recent survey of bank-risk professionals points to rising payment problems.

In a survey conducted for FICO and released this month, 67 percent of banking-industry respondents anticipated rising delinquencies on these loans. That’s up from 48 percent in a similar quarterly survey released in October. In the latest survey, only 8 percent of bank-risk managers expected student-loan delinquencies to decrease.

“Evidence is mounting that student loans could be the next trouble spot for lenders,” Dr. Andrew Jennings, chief analytics officer at FICO, said in a statement. “A significant rise in defaults on student loans would impact lenders as well as taxpayers, who could be facing big losses due to these defaults.”

The survey also revealed other concerns among bankers. Regarding mortgages, 47 percent of respondents said they think mortgage delinquencies will rise, against 13 percent who expected them to decrease. some 45 percent saw credit-card payment problems increasing, compared with 21 percent anticipating a decline.

If you tend to keep low balances in your checking account, be sure you know how your bank processes transactions. Don’t assume withdrawals, debits and checks are handled in a first-come, first-served manner — you could be in for a costly surprise.

Rather than posting debits and withdrawals chronologically — as they come in — some banks process large-dollar transactions first, the Pew Charitable Trusts said. That can quickly deplete a checking-account balance so that many smaller subsequent payments each trigger overdraft charges.

Conversely, when a large-dollar transaction gets processed last, that might be the only one triggering a fee, assuming the account had insufficient funds to handle everything. Banks sometimes defend the practice on the grounds that big-ticket items such as a mortgage payment are the ones customers are most concerned about.

At any rate, Pew has called on banks to disclose their transaction methods and process everything in a manner that doesn’t maximize fees.

Evaluate your credit cards periodically, and make changes if needed. Among its tips for the coming year, for instance, Kiplinger’s generally recommends against using credit cards sponsored by airlines, which often carry hefty annual fees.

But the analysis also depends on the interest rates charged and other factors. These include grace periods, balance-transfer fees, retail-purchase protection, rewards, credit limits and fraud-liability coverage. Card-comparison websites such as Lowcards.com and CreditKarma.com make the shopping process easier.

After a lengthy decline during and after the recession, outstanding credit-card debts have started to push higher again, so picking a suitable card is becoming more important for many people.

Reach Wiles at russ.wiles @arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8616.

Wiles: Polish up your credit in 2012