Your Credit

I never cared much about my credit; that is until Free Credit Report.com began airing these commercials….

lol. Honestly folks I have always cared about my credit. It may not have been evident when I was a youngin’,  fresh out of high school and being tempted by credit card companies but I did care. I knew better, I just didn’t value my credit enough, back when I was offered credit cards by those companies that prey on newbies. I had heard the “Stay away from the credit cards” story from my mom a million times, but of course I, like many of you accepted these offers and five years later owed them around $4500 for a line of credit of $1000. 

 I along with many other young adults was so tempted by the offers from these credit companies that we couldn’t and didn’t turn them down. Also the minimum payment of $20 a month made the deal even sweeter. I mean seriously, who can’t pay $20 a month?  Well obviously we couldn’t or just didn’t because if so we wouldn’t have received letters that said the following:

This is an attempt to collect a debt. Any information obtained will be used for that purpose.

The above account has been listed with this office for collection. Our client has referred your account to our professional debt collection agency for collection. Please remit payment in full in the enclosed envelope. If you wish to arrange payment by credit card or bank draft, contact our office at the telephone number listed above.

Don’t those letters piss you off?  Well if you are anything like I used to be, you would promptly tear them up and toss them in the trash once you opened them and realized that it was just those people harassing you about money that you didn’t feel you owed. After all, you were a child (only 18 or 19) when they forced those credit cards on you. You didn’t ask for them, they basically forced you to take them,  knowing that you were fresh out of high school, had no creditable job or income nor the wisdom to realize that these cards were not a good idea.

Almost ten years later you realize that not only were those cards not such a good idea, they were a very bad deal and so were the payday loans. Now, you also realize that you could have done better at paying your other bills that also went into collection. You could have done without that new furniture set that you were taken to court over after you stopped making the payments and you could have got your car fixed and kept up the payments instead of parking it in your grandmothers yard and getting a new one, regardless of the fact that you still owed payments on the one sitting in granny’s yard.

I say all of this to stress the importance of credit. When we are young, many times having good credit isn’t such a big deal to us, but as we get older and want something in life we realize that all of those little things we forgot or neglected to pay really do add up. All of the little things you got on credit along the way and never paid now have your credit shot. No one wants to extend credit to you anymore because you messed it up so bad so many years earlier.

If you haven’t checked your credit please take the time to do so. Don’t just check one, check all three Experian, TransUnion and Equifax.  Why is it important to check all three? One good reason is that there may be different things listed on each report. When I checked my credit at Annual Credit Report.com where they allow you to check all three, I noticed that some things weren’t listed on all three reports. While one report had more in-depth information on each item listed on my report. 

If you haven’t been actively tracking your credit, start now. If your credit isn’t the best, do as much as you can to repair it. Maintaining a good credit rating is very important.