How To Manage Your Credit

Protect Your Score
TrueCredit.com Get Free Trial Now! 3 Bureau Scores. Free online access to national credit bureau scores from TransUnion, Equifax and Experian. Check for consistency and evaluate credit health. 3 Bureau Monitoring. Checks your TransUnion, Equifax and Experian credit profiles daily for changes that are made. Notifies you through email or cell phone of any changes. More Of This...	FreeCreditScore.com Get Free Trial Now! Experian Credit Score. Get your score online for free in minutes. Compare with national averages. Evaluate your credit health. Credit Score Estimator. Simulate credit-related financial decisions and see how they may affect your credit score. Prepare for the future. Plan ahead. Learn to better manage your credit. More Of This...	Zendough.com Get Free Trial Now! Credit Score. See your VantageScore, a type of credit score that is calculated from the credit histories from all three of the national credit bureaus. Learn how it is calculated and diagnose your credit health. Manage Debt. TransUnion helps you analyze your financial state of health and learn how to better manage your credit and debt profiles. More Of This...

How-To Section

How to Read Your Credit Report
Credit reports can be broken down into five or six sections. Each section will tell a little something different about you and your credit history.

Personal Information - This section lists all the available personal information about you. It'll include information such as your date of birth, your current and past addresses of residence, your employer, and another other miscellaneous comments.
Credit Summary - This section provides an overview of your entire credit account history. It'll show your open/active accounts as well as your closed/inactive accounts. Each account will display information concerning past/current balances and delinquencies.
Public Records - This section contains any credit information that has been officially made public record. This information will include records that pertain to bankruptcy or court records, tax liens, monetary judgments and overdue child support.
Credit Inquiries - This section lists businesses and agencies that have made an inquiry into your credit over the last two years. The creditors will look at your credit report when you apply for credit.
Account History - This section is similar to the credit summary section but is more detailed. Each credit account contains specific information describing the activity associated with it, such as the payment history.

How to Dispute Credit Errors
After you get your free credit report, you should review it thoroughly for inaccurate information. This may include credit reporting errors on your account statements. When you find such inconsistencies, photocopy the supporting documents and mail a letter to each of the credit bureaus to report the incident. Clearly explain the situation and validate your claim with your statement copies. Be sure to mail your credit report dispute through certified mail with a return receipt requested. You want to be sure the credit bureaus received your dispute.

The credit bureaus will have 30 days after they receive your dispute to investigate the matter. After this time is up they'll write back to you with the results of their investigation. If there are any changes that are made, you'll also get another free copy of your credit report. The addresses of the three major credit bureaus you should write to are listed below:

Equifax P.O. Box 7404256 Atlanta, GA 30374

Experian P.O. Box 2002 Allen, TX 75013

TransUnion P.O. Box 390 Springfield, PA 19064

How to Cancel Your Free Trial Membership
Cancelation of your Free Trial Membership is easy. All it takes is a simple phone call, before the expiration of the trial period, to the company, to cancel. There's no hassle and it's quick

CreditCheck Total : 1-866-506-7894

Equifax: 1-800-846-5279

FreeCreditReport.com: 1-888-829-6560

myFICO: 1-800-319-4433

TrueCredit: 1-800- 493-2392

Privacy Matters 123 1-877-993-6264

How to Maintain a Good Credit Score

Pay your bills on time. This should be the most obvious and is also the most important thing you can do to help improve your credit. It shows financial responsibility. It shows you're not a credit risk. This doesn't mean you need to always pay off your bills completely. You can pay some off in increments as designated by the terms of your credit agreement. Such as in financing scenarios. Pay the required balance and interests associated with it.
Keep debt balances down to a minimum. The more you already owe, the harder it will be to get more loans. A high debt-to-credit ratio will lower your credit score. You should try to keep it around 10% or lower. This means you should try to spend no more than 10% of what your limit is.
Don't cancel credit card accounts that you don't often use. These old accounts actually beneficial to your credit standing. Old accounts demonstrate long credit history usage. This is a plus, showing that you aren't a newbie to the scene.
Don't open up too many new accounts in a short period of time. You might be red flagged as a person who either needs too much credit or as a person who doesn't know how to manage credit responsibly.
Control the number of credit inquiries that are made to your credit report. There are soft inquiries and hard inquiries. Hard inquiries usually come when lenders need to view your credit profile before opening a new account or loan for you. Contact anybody that shouldn't be looking at your credit report to stop making inquiries.
Decrease your debt to income ratio.
Check your credit at periodically, at least once a year. Make sure there aren't any reporting inaccuracies.
Simply put, manage your credit and debt responsibly. This means doing the little things right, such as paying bills on time and not bouncing any checks. Don't open up too many credit accounts and don't take out too many loans. Have a steady income coming in and don't spend too much more than you make. The little things add up through time.

How to Change your Name After You Get Married
If you decide to take on a new name, such as the surname of your husband, you should report the name change to all institutions with which you are associated with. This also includes each of the credit reporting bureaus: Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian.

What you need to do is write a letter to each of the credit reporting agencies informing them of this change. Include information about your previous identity such as your maiden name, social security number and old mailing address and tell them what the new information should contain. You might want to follow up with them in a couple of months to make sure the changes were actually made.

Equifax Credit Information Services Inc. P.O. Box 740241 Atlanta, GA 30374

TransUnion LLC Consumer Disclosure Center P.O. Box 1000 Chester, PA 19022

Experian National Consumer Assistance Center P.O. Box 2002 Allen, TX 75013

How to Separate Joint Accounts After You Get Divorced
Breakups are never an easy thing nor are they always clean and simple. Thus when divorce happen, an important issue to address and resolve is that concerning finances. It is important that whatever joint accounts a couple used to have be closed. Activity on joint accounts are recorded on both parties credit reports. An ex-spouse could easily and maliciously sabotage the credit of the other if these accounts remain open. Call your credit card companies to cancel joint credit cards.

Much similar to the process a women goes through when she changes her name after she gets married, she may want to change her name back to her maiden name. All joint accounts should be closed as to prevent future complications.

CreditReportProtect.com and the featured sponsors/paid ads on this website are NOT affiliated to the annual free credit report program. According to FTC(via ftc.gov), everyone has the right to receive a free copy of their credit report once every year from each of the three nationwide consumer reporting agencies. To get your free annual report with respect to this law, you need to visit www.annualcreditreport.com.

Comments:

Please note that articles on this site are not to be considered as legal or professional advice, and are to be used for personal education purposes only. We don't warrant any products or articles on this site. Please read all fine prints if you decide to try out any of the products featured on this site. It is your responsibility to cancel if you don't want to continue with any of services you try. Emailing CreditReportProtect.com will not cancel your trial and/or subscription, we operate independently from all listed featured sponsors thus have no access to your personal accounts.

Your Name:
Your Email:
Your Comments:	--- Write Your Comments Here ---