How can I find out the credit rating of a company
You can view Standard & Poor's credit ratings here:  http://www.standardandpoors.com/ratings/en/us/ You have to register with S&P to access the ratings. Dunn & Bradstreet offers detailed credit reports on businesses.  They are not cheap, but they appear to have information on RIOCAN.
Chances are since college is your next likely step I would recommend saving up for it.  Start building an emergency fund. Recommended $1,000 minimum. To start building your credit rating (when 18) get a low interest low limit credit.  Pay off the balance every month. Starting to build your credit rating now can save you hundreds of thousands when buying a house over the course of paying it off.  ie. cheaper interest rate. As for investing, the sooner you can get started the better.  Acquire preferred/stocks/bonds/REITs/ETFs/etc that pay you to own them (they pay you dividends monthly/quarterly/etc).  Stick with solid stocks that have a history of consistently increasing their dividends over time and that are solid companies. I personally follow the work/advice of Derek Foster.  He's not a professional but he retired at 34.  His first book (Stop working - Here's how you can) is great and recommend it to anyone who is looking to get started. Also check out Ramit Sethi's blog I Will Teach You to be Rich. He focuses on big wins which save you a lot over the long term.  He's also got some great advice for students as well. Best of luck! "I've done exactly what you are describing and it was a great move for me. A few years back I had two credit cards. One had a $6000 balance and a fairly high interest rate that I was making steady payments to (including interest).  The other was actually tied to a HELOC (home equity line of credit) whose interest rate was fixed to ""prime"", which was very low at the time, I think my effective rate on the card was around 3%.  So, I pulled out one of the ""cash advance checks"" from the HELOC account and paid off the $6000 balance. Then I started making my monthly payments against the balance on the HELOC, and paid it off a bit more quickly and with less overall money spent because I was paying way less interest. Another, similar, tactic is to find a card that doesn't charge fees for balance transfers and that has a 0% interest rate for the first 12 months on transferred balances. I am pretty sure they are out there. Open an account on that card, transfer the balance to it, and pay it down within 12 months. And, try not to use the card for anything else if you can help it." Because people are going deeper into debt and filing for bankruptcy more often, there is more risk on behalf of the credit company.  Therefore, they limit their risk by lower limits and increasing interest. For every person that goes bankrupt, there might be 10 that pay that new higher interest rate, thereby netting a profit even though they lost out completely on the one customer. The recent legislation limited how and under what circumstance rate are adjusted and raised, but not forbidden. As for the fact that these banks took tax money under the idea (we all thought) I see two points of view. We never should have had the credit we did, so they are correcting and you (like me and millions of others) are suffering for their prior mistakes.  It is an honest attempt to correct the system for long term stability even if we suffer in the short term. We gave them tax money, they need to not screw us over.  In response to the still frozen credit markets I would suggest penalty taxes to companies that do not lend. Penalties to companies that do not modify mortgages.  The second you take government money is the last second a you are entitled to a profit of anything.  Furthermore, we the people bought you and we the people get to decide your salary. The bottom line is there is truth in both statements.  Things are totally screwed up right now because we ALL made mistakes in the past trying to get a bigger profit or own a bigger house.  There are those among us who didn't make a mistake, and those among us who made nothing but mistakes.  As a society, we have to pay the piper either way. The best thing you can do now is pay down your debts, live simply and spend your money wisely. "The bill proposed to ""Under existing law, employers may take tax deductions for the costs associated with moving jobs out of the country. The proposed legislation would have eliminated that, and used the resulting new revenue to fund a 20 percent tax credit for the costs companies run up ""insourcing"" labor back into the U.S."" From http://abcnews.go.com/m/blogEntry?id=16816660 as found by beermethestrength. I will explain this in an example below.   Lets use allen edmonds. I manufacture shoes and sell them in the US. The facts we will assume is Revenue or sales is $100. Manufacturing cost is $50. Tax rate is 10%. Therefore, Profit before tax is $100 -$50 = $50. Tax is $5. Net profit is $45.  However, suppose offshoring to Canada saves money. They say please and thank you at every opportunity and the positive work environment allows them to work faster. Correspondingly to make the same number of shoes our costs has decreased because we pay less for labour. The manufacturing cost decreases to $30. However, we incur costs to move such as severance payments to layoff contracted employees. (I promise to hire you and pay $1 a year for 2 years. I fire you at the end of the first year. To be fair, I pay you $1) However, it can be any legitimate expense under the sun. In this case we suppose this moving cost is $10. Revenue or sales is $100. Manufacturing cost is $30. Moving cost is $10. Tax rate is 10%. Profit before tax is $100 -$40 = $60. Tax is $6. Net profit is $54. Yay more jobs for Canadians.   However, the legislation would have changed this. It would have denied that moving expense if you were moving out of the country. Therefore, we cannot consider $10 worth of expenses for tax purposes. Therefore Revenue or sales is $100. Manufacturing cost is $30. Tax rate is 10%. Profit before tax for tax purposes is $100 - $30 = $70. Tax is $7. Net profit for tax purposes is $63. However, my accounting/net/real profit is $53. I must deduct the $10 associated with moving. The difference between the two scenarios is $1. In general our net profit changes by our moving cost * our tax rate.  There is no tax break associated with moving. In Canadian tax, any business expense in general can be deducted as long as it is legitimate and not specifically denied. I am uncertain but would assume US tax law is similar enough. Moving expenses in general are legitimate and not specifically denied and therefore can be deducted.  Offshoring and onshoring are seen as legitimate business activities as in general companies do things to increase profit. (forget about patriotism for the moment).  The bill was to make offshoring more expensive and therefore fewer companies would find offshoring profitable. However, republicans defeated this bill in congress. Most likely the house  For completeness let us examine what would happen when we onshore (bring jobs from canada to us :( ). In our example, silly unions demand unrealistically high wages and increase our cost of manufacturing to $50 again. We decide to move back to the US because if it is the same everywhere for the sake of silly national pride we move our jobs back to the US. We incur the same moving cost of $10. Therefore we have Revenue or sales is $100. Manufacturing cost is $50. Moving cost of $10. Tax rate is 10%. Profit before tax for tax purposes is $100 - $60 = $40. Tax is $4. However, we are given a 20% tax credit for moving expense. $10 * .2 = 2. The government only assess us tax of 2. Net profit is $38. Tax credits are a one time deal so profit in the future will be $100 -$50 - $5 = $45. Same as the first example.  insourcing = onshoring , outsourcing = offshoring for the purposes of this article. Not quite the same in real life." Almost every bank has some kind of financial statement analysis to give a credit score to small companies asking for credit. Then the account manager will decide either to refuse because the credit score is too low or allow it and justify why he conceded credit "You can learn very little from it. Company directories are often given share options or shares as a bonus, and because of that they are unlikely to buy shares. When they sell shares, you'll hear people shouting ""so-and-so sold his or her shares, they must know something bad about the company"".  The truth is that you can't eat or drink shares. If that company director owning shares worth a million dollars wants to buy a new Ferrari, he will find that Ferrari doesn't give free cars to people owning lots of shares. He actually has to sell the shares to get the money for the car, and that's what he does." You can sue them for damages. It would be hard to convince the court that the drop in the credit score was because of that loan, but not unthinkable. Especially if you sue through the small-claims court, where the burden of proof is slightly less formal, you have a chance to win and have them pay the difference in rates that it cost you. Rating agencies should be paid on accuracy, i.e. each bond issued pays x $ into a pool, and the bond companies whom are accurate over the maturity get a share of the pool.  Those whom are not, must add money to the pool. (Like an accuracy market!)