Career Ramblings

Give Your Credit A Post Holiday Checkup

Jan 25th, 2007 by John Anthony

The holidays are finally over. Many people spend January surveying the damage done to their waistline and wallet over the last several weeks, but do nothing about it.? Why not make January the month you review and repair (if necessary) your credit report and reaise your credit score?

Here are a few simple?things you can do:

Acquire Knowledge:? Get all three bureau credit reports and scores at the same time.? You can spend $5 to access your score, but you can also access 1 free report per year at http://www.annualcreditreport.com/.? Be sure to respond quickly to inaccuracies in writing either by mail or online.
Resolve To Pay On Time: Yes, it’s obvious, but with such busy schedules, many people fail to remember the date to put checks in the mail so they’ll clear in time.
Get Current: If you have missed payments on an account, do whatever it takes to get current and then never let yourself fall behind again.
Understand the Problems With Your Credit: It takes seven years to remove a collection account from your credit record, even if you’ve paid it off.? Don’t let this happen to you.
Get Rid Of Balances In Sequence: Come up with a beginning of the year plan to pay off credit card balances in a sensible order.? There is a big temptation to move around outstanding balances if you get a good offer.? Don’t do it, unless you ablsolutely have to.
Cut Up The Card - But Don’t Close The Account: Closing accounts, even those that have zero balances for years, can be a bad idea.? Lenders want to see a long record of credit management and longtime accounts that you haven’t touched in many years may actually help your score because it shows some constraint.