Two Reasons To Check Your Credit Score

Yesterdays link from the MSN Blog sparked all sorts of traffic to TMM. With the traffic came some really good comments on various articles. I’m glad to see people were checking out the rest of our articles. Both in our comments and on MSN Blogs comments there was great discussion on credit reports. One reader referred to it as a “I love debt score,” I take it he has read Dave Ramsey’s total money make over and drank half a gallon of the cool aide. Here is a quick article on Credit Scores.

Obtaining your credit report

There are many companies that have sprung to life since Identity theft went main stream. Those of us in the States who watch any amount of television are more than likely with the television commercials for freecreditreport.com. The commercials lyrically walk you through the hardships of a young hipster like many of us who found out the hard way he had bad credit. The actor then conveys to us that he would have been better off had he checked his credit score at freecreditreport.com. Many people goto their website, sign up and realize its a service only offering minimal reporting. In order to get more detail you have to enroll in the “Triple Advantage” program for a fee.

To obtain your truly free credit report you can visit Annual Credit Report. The service is free, and you can go back each year to get an updated version of your report.

Reasons to Check Your Credit Report

The first and foremost is your safety, your financial safety that is. Identity theft has been on the rise over the years and it does not look as though the problem will go away anytime soon. scam artists are ripping off peoples identities and using them to open lines of credit. Without checking your credit report regularly you may find yourself involved in multiple legal battles fighting charges you’ve never made. Having talked with a few individuals about their experience after having their identity stolen they tell me it takes years to balance things out. Obtaining and checking your credit report annually allows you to notice accounts you did not open and possibly hinder a scam artist from tarnishing your credit more than they have.

Secondly, your credit history determines the rates you will receive when applying for a line of credit. For Dave Ramsey followers they do not have to worry about their credit score because they all have $400,000 in the bank to pay for a house in cash, $20,000 in cash to pay for a car and $100,000 to pay for their child’s education. The reality of it is, our nation is a debt nation and it’s somewhat hard to manage without the use of debt in some area’s of our life. Purchasing a vehicle without debt is definitely feasible. However, purchasing a house without the use of credit or funding a child’s education without the use of credit is not as easy. The key to debt is using it wisely! This is what the one reader referred to as the “I love debt score.” While everyone else in my neighborhood purchased their home on credit there are only a few individuals I know of that did not use any type of loan. Those individuals are either retired and sold a home with a high amount of equity, or were young, were $500,000 or more in debt because of their mortgage in another state (California, New York) and lucked out by selling when their property value doubled. I know Dave Ramsey preaches not using credit at all, but come on guy’s he can get away with that! He’s a millionaire from selling books that tell everyone not to use credit! When you have a net worth of a few million dollars you won’t need credit either

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