Freddie Stewart asked:




Whether or not lending or financial institution will give you a loan or credit depends on your credit score. Your credit score is based on how you pay off your previous and existing loans. It gives lender a pretty good picture of how good you are at managing and paying off your debts.

While you are alive and functioning in society, your credit score changes. Your decisions regarding your debt will lower or raise your credit score. Making good financial decisions may help raise your credit score.

Here are some steps you can take towards improving your credit score:

Find out your credit report The 3 credit bureaus, Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian have their own reports regarding your creditworthiness. They may have different reports because they may not have the same kind of information as creditors don’t need to report to each and every one of them. If you have been denied credit or employment because of your credit score, you are entitled to ask for a copy of that report from the credit bureau because the company you applied to is required by law to submit the name of credit bureau they got the report from. Study your reports from all 3 bureaus carefully The job of a credit bureau is to report on information supplied by you creditors. Since they don’t verify the information they receive there may be some mistakes in the information given. It may sound unfair but keeping your credit report a true reflection of your creditworthiness is your job. Be meticulous in making sure all information such as dates and figures are correct. Make a list of items you want to dispute and be ready to defend your claims. Dispute and Document, the Double-D strategy Be very thorough in documenting all mistakes you find in your credit reports. Identify which points of the reports are wrong and tell them why. A good stategy is to give the credit bureaus photocopies of their reports and encircling the mistakes. Don’t forget to supply the correct entries to the mistakes. Keep all documents and forms you send to the credit bureaus and keep note of the dates. The credit bureaus must look into and investigate all credit disputes within 30 days. If a dispute is not verified by a creditor, it must be automatically removed from the report. You can also go to the creditors themselves and try to resolve any mistakes directly. If any changes are made to your credit report, the responsible credit bureau will send you a free copy of the revised report. Negative entries that have been removed cannot be put back in the report unless the creditors can verify accuracy and completeness of the entry. They should also send you written notice that they are going to do so. Solve and Dissolve debt Find ways to finally get rid of your debts. Resolve all unpaid debts by negotiating for longer payment schemes and lower interest rates. Avoid getting a delinquent or bad credit standing. When you’ve paid off your credit debt, consider getting rid of your cards. Stabilize your credit file Make sure your credit records are updated and complete. Sometimes, creditors don’t report to credit bureaus so it’s up to you to make sure they do.

Try to re-establish good credit especially if you’ve had bad credit previously. You’ll improve your credit score faster if you keep your credit active and in good standing.

The best way to show creditors that you’re a good credit risk is if you have enough money in the bank to show that you save and that you’re able to pay them off.

Juanita

Marc Marseille asked:




Identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes in America. The effects of identity theft can be a very hurtful experience that mostly occurs during the important moments of your life. Many victims of identity theft do not even realize that someone or in some cases several people have been violating them by getting access to their personal credit bureau report. Protecting your credit bureau report can easily be achieved by getting a copy of your free triple score from all three credit bureaus.

Your free triple score report will provide you with all the information you have reporting with all three credit bureaus: Experian, Equifax, and Trans Union. Once you have received your credit bureau report, it is crucial that you do a thorough investigation to make sure that all your information is reporting correctly. If you find that you have been a victim of identity fraud, the best thing to do in that situation is to seek professional legal help through a reputable credit attorney.

It is unfortunate if you find yourself dealing with the situation of having your identity stolen, but there several steps you can take to prevent identity theft before it happens. The first step is to arm yourself with identity protection. Many credit card companies offer identity protection through a small monthly fee on your credit card, but if you have several credit cards, you may want to consider getting a more universal identity protection policy. Getting a universal identity protection policy includes using a company that works hand in hand with the 3 credit bureaus to create a lock on your credit bureau report.

Once you’ve create a lock on your credit report, no one can make any purchases using your information without having to verify some very vital information. To secure yourself even further, it is important to shred all important personal information before disposing of them. Information that should be shredded is bank statements, credit card statements, and anything that shows your Social Security Number.

Another precaution you can take is to never give your Social Security Number over the internet through an unsecured server. One way to find out if the website you are viewing is insecure is by looking at your browser window. All secure internet websites start with https: and not just http:. To make it even safer to surf the internet, you should get virus protection, spyware and a reliable internet explorer like Firefox.

My last recommendation to protection your free triple score report sounds simple enough, but a lot of people fall victim to it everyday; you should never give your Social Security Number over the telephone to a company you do not trust. Unless you have a long lasting relationship with a certain company, it is better to deal in person. If you must give sensitive information over the phone such as banking, try to establish a relationship with one particular individual in that department before you do so.

Jeremy

L. Sampson asked:




Knowing what is on your credit report can help to keep your personal information safe, give you a chance to correct inaccuracies, and save you money on interest rates when you apply for a home loan. With the wide availability of free or low cost credit reports online, there is no reason to spend a lot of money to find out how credit worthy you really are.

Obtain a free credit report when you sign up for special services

If you are interested in signing up for credit monitoring or similar credit check services, take advantage of a company that offers a free credit report when you sign up for their program. If you are interested in a credit monitoring or counseling program, look for one that offers a free credit report instead of paying for this information.

Go straight to the source

According to the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act, everyone is entitled to receive a free copy of their credit report from each of the three nationwide credit reporting agencies, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, once every 12 months. You can individually request a copy from each bureau or you can look for online companies that offer a free centralized request form that lets you fill out one form and receive your credit report from all three agencies.

Save money later by not being too thrifty now

While free online credit sites abound on the internet, it isn’t always as free as it sounds. Always thoroughly research any company you are about to request a free credit report from. Some are nothing more than fronts for identity theft scams. Ironically a consumer thinks they are getting a credit report to safeguard their credit, when in truth they are giving away valuable information to identity thieves. While it might seem wonderful to get a credit report for nothing, it won’t seem so wonderful if you have to go through the headache of cleaning up your credit report or if you aren’t able to secure a loan because of fraudulent information on your report.

Sandra

Gary Gresham asked:




Every consumer in America has the right to a free credit report once every year by law as of September 2005. But since that law has passed there has been nothing but confusion.

The web sites that say they are offering this so called free credit report, are asking us to give them our credit card information. Does that sound like a free credit report to you?

You may have even given your credit card number to these companies to sign up for a thirty day trial for a credit service that has almost nothing to do with getting your free credit report.

In all fairness, you can cancel this service after thirty days. But how many people do you think forget and end up with monthly or even annual credit card charges?

In fact, these companies are counting on you forgetting about the thirty day trial and charging that fee on your credit card. But if the law says you get a free report, what’s the deal?

A lot of people are confused about these free credit reports because of how some companies are marketing the free credit report. Hopefully, this information will clear a few things up for you.

For people who just want the bottom line, a free credit report is available at http://www.AnnualCreditReport.com and this is the only official site that helps consumers to obtain their annual free credit report.

This site’s security protocols are excellent with physical and technological security and encryption. That’s important for identity theft purposes because the information on your credit report should be seen by your eyes only.

So if this site is readily available and anyone can get a free credit report once a year, what’s the catch? Here is the catch: the credit report you get from http://www.AnnualCreditReport.com does not have any credit scores.

Now you may be asking, “Then what good is getting this free credit report without a credit score?” There are a few good reasons why you may want to look at your credit report even without a credit score.

Did you know that more than forty percent of all credit reports have errors? If you spot these errors, you can get them cleared up before it affects your credit score. If you contact a credit bureau about an error, they have to clear it up or remove it after thirty days by law.

If you monitor and review your credit report, you can check to be sure that you are not a victim of identity theft. If someone takes over your accounts and charges up thousands of dollars in debt, they can destroy your credit score in a matter of hours.

These are just a couple of good reasons why you want to get your free credit report once a year and inspect it just to be sure everything looks like it should. You can get your free credit report online at http://www.AnnualCreditReport.com or by phone or through the mail.

So where do you get your credit score from? This is where the confusion comes in and here is the answer. The law Congress passed did not say anything about a credit score just one free credit report a year per consumer.

You have to pay a service to get your credit score and some companies are confusing people with the way they are marketing this. They offer you a free credit report and score and many consumers believe it’s their annual free credit report.

But if you have to sign up for a credit service they offer for a 30 day trial period, does that sound free? What these companies are counting on is you forgetting about the 30 day trial and charging a fee on your credit card once that trial period is over.

It’s in the fine print, but how many people actually read that. So here is a good common sense rule of thumb. Any time you have to give your credit card information, ask yourself, “is this really free?”

Many of you probably know this is happening because you have been trapped with this kind of marketing tactic. But for those of you that just want your annual free credit report, you can at least be aware as to what is really going on and have a no nonsense way to get it.

Copyright

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Frank Bruno asked:




Once a charge off was declared by your creditor, they would consider it as bad debt and would be allowed to include it in the Profit and Loss section of the debtor’s financial statement. This would allow your creditor to treat your bad debt as a business expense and the Internal Revenue Service would not demand any taxes on these items.

Although it is considered to be a bad debt, it does not mean that it would not be uncollected. Your creditor would still be doing necessary steps in order to collect their money including filing a lawsuit if hiring an outside collection agency does not work.

According to the Fair Credit Report Act, these charge offs could remain for as long as seven years unless your creditor asked the credit bureau to remove it. Of course, you will have to negotiate payment of your debt, whether in partial or full. Factors that your creditor will consider before agreeing to any negotiation include debt amount, offered settlement, and other policies that the creditor requires.

If you are attempting to settle your charge off, you should remember to document everything. Also important is to make arrangement with someone for the creditor’s office who has the legal authority to enter into such agreement. You should make sure that the agreement is legal and binding before you pay anything. If not, you will never have the chance to remove the charge-off record on your credit report.

When negotiating payment terms, you should make sure that you are doing so realistically. Do not make promises that you will have difficulties keeping. You will only make matters worse if you try to commit to paying more than you can afford. To deal with your charge-off troubles, you must be able to realistically face your financial situation. Determine what the reasons for your indebtedness were and how you can manage them. In most cases, a change in spending habits and bills management is in order.

Charge-offs can actually be avoided if you are just diligent in paying your bills or speaking with your lender. On the other hand, if the charge-off is already there in your credit history, then dealing with it should be your top priority. Although it would take some time, it is only the responsible thing to do. You should definitely learn from this experience and make sure it does not happen again.

Lonnie

Francine Denson asked:




There some confusion out there when it comes to free credit reports. You have likely seen the many articles that are floating around that state that you can get your free credit report, but just what does a free credit report consist of? In this article will will look at the differences in the 3 different types of credit reports advertised and learn more about which one is the most beneficial to have.

Type #1) Single Credit Bureau Report

One type of credit report is one where you can get a report from only one of the three bureaus. These three bureaus are Equifax, Trans Union and Experian; most of the time with this type of report you will have to choose one of these companies to get your report from. This may not help you very much because each of the three bureaus differs a bit in the content they report. You would probably benefit more from a 3-1.

Usefulness: C-

Type #2) 3-1 Credit Report

A 3-1 report would include a report from each of the three bureaus. The advantage to this is you get all three reports. The downside is that you get only one score from one bureau. It would be more sensible to receive all three of the bureaus scores. Mortgage companies look at the three scores and usually go by the one in the middle. I would only be logical to see what they see if you are attempting to get a loan.

Usefulness: B

Type #3) 3-1 Credit Report With Credit Scores

This brings us to the third type. This is the 3-1 credit report that included all three scores. This is the best offer there is due to the fact that this is what lenders look at. You will want to ensure that you know what you are getting when you request a credit report.

Usefulness: A+

Every consumer is entitled to one free report from each of the three bureaus annually, but this does not include a credit score. By using the services of on of the popular online free credit report sites, you can get instant access to not only your credit reports but your credit scores as well. You would be best off off obtaining a 3-1 with all three scores so you can have a clear view of what lenders are looking at when deciding whether or not to approve your loan.

Andre

soidef9df5 asked:

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Paula