Someone is talking about you behind your back. They’re telling people about your finances. They’re telling them that, yes, you made your payment on time or no, you were 30 days late a few months ago. They’re talking about how much debt you have and how many times you’ve tried to obtain credit.

Lots of people are talking and it’s absolutely in your best interest to “listen in” on these conversations. How? By looking at your credit report REGULARLY. Every month, your creditors and people you have sought credit with report to three major bureaus - TransUnion, Experian and Equifax - about your financial activities. They don’t know how much you have in your checking and savings accounts or how much you put into your retirement fund, but they do know how much debt you have and how good you are at servicing that debt faithfully.

If you haven’t already done so, you need to get a free credit report TODAY! You can do it online. It’s safe, it’s easy and it will tell you a lot about what other people are seeing. I have a subscription with TrueCredit that costs me $10 each month and they alert me when anything on my credit report, for any of the three major bureaus, changes. I can log in any time and get my latest credit score, see recent inquiries and view statistics and trends in report. That helps me to do a couple of things: First I can plan for the future. I know that if I want to buy a home or a car, I need to have the best credit score possible in order to get a low interest rate. I can keep track of where my score is and where I want it to be and TrueCredit provides me with great suggestions on how to get it there.

Second, I tell if something is not right with my credit report. If an unauthorized inquiry is made, I can start figuring out where it came from. If an account is reported multiple times, I can take steps to correct it. (ANd by the way, that DOES happen. The bank that my mortgage was with got bought out and when all was said and done, Equifax reported that I had TWO mortgages, but only one house… I didn’t find this out until my wife and I were trying to buy a car.)

Third, the service from TrueCredit gives me the added benefit of seeing what the trends are in my credit report. I can watch month-to-month as my available credit increases (because of my debt paydown) and my credit score increase while my balances go down. It really helps to keep you on track with your debt payment plan and it helps you to see the positive effects of your hard work.

So, don’t wait any longer. Get a free credit report today so that you know what people are saying about you.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 26th, 2006 at 8:01 am and is filed under Credit Cards, Debt. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.