January 10 2009
Your Credit Information And How It Decides Our Life
Tagged Under : bankruptcy, credit information, credit score, foreclosure, identity theft, your credit score
Your credit information may be of no use to you. If you’re not planning on buying a house or renting an apartment, buying a car, taking out a loan, paying for college or getting a new credit card, then you won’t need to worry about getting your free credit score. However, most people need to visit www.AnnualCreditReport.com to get a listing of all late payments, charge-offs, debts, collections, loans, liens and types of credit accounts open, so they can get an honest appraisal of their borrowing power. Credit report services from Equifax, Experian and TransUnion each will offer you a free report once a year to help you see where you are and where you need to be financially.
Sometimes, you may look at your free credit scores and credit information only to find it rife with errors. First, get your free credit scores online from Equifax, Experian and TransUnion at www.AnnualCreditReport.com, then print them out and highlight any negative information. Circle disputed records. Check the expiration dates of the records. Bankruptcy filing records should have expired 10 years after the first filing date, charge-offs should be gone within 7 years, collection records should expire within 7 years and 180 days after the last late payment, closed accounts should be removed in 7 years, foreclosure records last for 7 years, inquiries will remain on your credit report for 1-2 years but will not hurt your overall score, judgments/court decisions will remain for 7 years after the filing date, late payments of more than 30 days remain for 7 years, repossession records persist for 7 years and tax liens can remain indefinitely, if unpaid, or else 7 years from the paid date.
To file a dispute about your credit information, you can write a letter to all three major credit bureaus, which are Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. On the letter, put the date, your name, address, phone number and social security number. All you have to put is hat the data is wrong and can they update it and then list the wrong info and explain why its wrong. Attach a marked copy of your credit score report and include all previous communication, account records or statements that will help verify your version of the truth. By letter is the best way to dispute with Equifax and TransUnion, but Experian only allows online disputes. The credit bureaus then have 30 days to investigate and repair your credit info. Once they are done, they will write you a letter including what was or was not updated. If you’re not satisfied with the letter, then you can try again with different documentation or get in touch with the creditor to try and fix at the source.
Sometimes, having a look at your credit information is the best way to bring to light an identity theft if you are don’t use one of the identity theft products such as Life Lock who continually watch your credit information for you and look for any weird activity. If you find strange in your credit information that you have absolutely no explanation for, a new credit card, a new TV on credit etc. contact the 3 credit agencies as soon as possible and police for help. Without any form of protection, monitoring your credit information is really the only way to avoid identity theft running out of control with your finances. It won’t prevent it from occurring it but at least it stops from getting any worse.
Looking at your credit information can be daunting at first if you’ve had a back track record. The worst thing you can do is put everything off and wait for it to go away. If the creditors are really hounding you and you’re not sure how you’ll have the money to cover it all, then your best bet is going through a credit counselor or debt relief agency. If you have one or two bills that are behind or have paid most of your debts off and are just looking to start anew, then you can handle this. The last 24 months constitute 60% of your credit score, so you can turn things around this year simply by paying your bills regularly, in full and on-time.

