Thursday, April 7, 2011

Credit Score

I never really knew much about credit or credit scores but I have spent the past year really trying to improve my credit score. I had no idea what my score was, what effected it or even what a good rating was. It wasn't that I didn't care, I guess I just didn't have much knowledge when it came to my credit. I never had credit cards and only once had a car loan in my name. I never really had a reason to think about my credit.

Over the past year though Prince Charming and I have talked a lot about credit, and slowly I've learned. I have started doing a lot of reading about credit scores and am taking back control of my credit. 2 years ago was when I got my first credit card. It had a low credit limit which I was ok with. I was just learning after all. I made sure I was never late on my payments. After a year of having that card I decided I'd try for another and I got it. Then I really got excited about my credit and felt like I was going to be able to fix it.

But what was I fixing? I had never even seen my credit report to know if it was bad or good or in between. How can you fix something if you don't know if or what is broken? That of course which prompted me to get my free credit score. I did that about 2 weeks ago. I still have some fixing to do on it. I actually found several things on my credit report that should not be there. Just as bad, they've been there since 2005 and I didn't know it because I never bothered to look at my report.

What really prompted me to get my report was I started receiving calls from bill collectors telling me that I owed them money for SBC Ohio and Sprint. I didn't know who SBC Ohio was and Sprint I didn't have an account with so I couldn't figure out why they were calling me. The company on the phone couldn't/wouldn't give me the address they had for me so I refused to give them any of my info. So when I got my report I looked it over and sure enough neither of these companies or anything related to them are on there. There are 2 things on my report that I have to dispute because they aren't my accounts.

So starts the long journey of fixing my credit and actually knowing what I'm fixing!

5 comments:

  1. I'm guessing that will be a battle to get it straightened out. I'm sorry!

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  2. It's very important to get your credit report straightened out. I get a free copy of my credit score every six months (one from each of the big "two").

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  3. My husband has the same name as his dad and when we first went to buy our first house we had tons of problems because they thought we were them. They have HORRIBLE HORRIBLE credit.

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  4. I'm like you, I only got wise to this kind of stuff recenlty. Now because it was hard lesson to learn, I'm going to try and teach this to my kids as early as necessary!

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  5. My husband gives our credit scores more attention than he gives me...
    The Scores are more important now than ever!

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