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Do you check on your credit report regularly? If not, you need to right now. Here’s why it’s important to track consistently.
When it comes to tracking your debt and your money, you need to keep an eye on your credit report. I do this weekly, but you could opt to do it monthly instead. Just make sure you make an effort to track your report on a regular basis. This will help alert you of any errors that may require the services of a credit correction law firm to be rectified.
This is more than just to keep an eye on your credit score. After all, if you’re not planning on borrowing a lot of money or move from where you are, you may not be all that interested in your credit score. Your credit report tells you a lot more than the basic score, though.
And you’ll want to track from multiple places. Equifax is going to have a different report to Transunion.
Make sure your credit details are correct
When you get your report for the first time, you’ll see all your personal details. These will include your address, your date of birth, and your name. It’s essential that you make sure that these are right. Something that doesn’t look right will lead to problems with getting credit in the future.
If there are incorrect details, you can get in touch with the credit reporting company to make sure you update everything. If you have just recently changed your name, such as if you’ve married, you’ll want to make sure all the reporting agencies are noted of this and then keep an eye to make sure the report changes with all the details.
Make sure your credit report is correct
Your report tells you all the people you owe money to. This will include a mortgage or car loan that you have set up, any credit cards or lines of credit that you have, and even some of your utility payments. Not all companies will report the details to the agencies, but many of them will.
You need to make sure that you only have the right details on your report. There are times that names and details can be mixed up, leading to you having someone else’s line of credit or loan on your account. You’ll need to get this cleaned up as quickly as possible as it’s going to affect your credit score.
It’s also important to make sure that all the details on each of the reporting agencies is right. Has your credit card not updated for three months to show your on time payments? You may want to find out why, especially if you are improving your credit score. Did an agency incorrectly report that you missed a payment? You’ll want to double check on the reason for that to ensure everything is updated as you expect it to be.
Look out for fraudulent activity
We can all end up with fraud without realizing it. Someone may open up a credit card in your name if they’ve stolen your details. You may notice a line of credit with a bank that you don’t have an account with.
Anything that doesn’t look right on your credit report needs to be investigated. If you leave the accounts open, the fraudsters aren’t going to pay off the bills. They’ll rack up money that you end up being liable for. It’s best to nip it all in the bud as soon as possible, so you can live without the stress. The last thing you need is debt collectors calling you for something that you don’t know about. They don’t care!
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Make sure you have your credit report accessible. There are some great companies to do that with now. In Canada, I love Credit Karma and Borrowell as they take the reports from two different agencies so I can keep track of everything.
