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When your credit score sustains a dent, make sure your car doesn’t. Because higher car insurance is just what you need when you’ve lost your job. Auto insurers use customers’ credit scores as part of the formula to determine premiums. Shop around—different companies assign different weights to credit score in their calculations. [MainStreet.com]
A great way to improve your credit score is to get rid of errors on your credit report that are dragging you down, but how do you start?
Add “change the name on your utility bills” to your post-breakup checklist or you’ll end up like reader Noah, who had to pay a $140 cable bill for three months of service his ex-girlfriend used after he moved out. Why? Because the bill was in his name, and if he didn’t pay up, it was his credit report that was going to suffer.
Since posting an article about Craiglist apartment listing scams a month ago, we’ve heard from lots of people who fell for the scam. If you’re one of them, here’s what you need to know.
Tom just received a great offer from his bank. He can receive a free credit report just by peeling off this sticker and affixing it to another part of the same page. That’s right, a free motherloving credit report! Who doesn’t want one of those? Free, you say? Sign me up!
A three-digit number that creditors use to quickly evaluate whether to give someone a loan and how favorable the terms should be, the credit score remains something of a mystery to many. How is it figured out? What matters, and what doesn’t matter? The exact scoring system is a proprietary secret of the Fair Issac corporation, but there are 5 general categories, each weighted differently, that determine where you sit on the range from 300-850. In easy-to-read outline form, let’s take a closer look.
Santana had actually already sought permission from the bank to settle for as little as $10,000. It’s an open secret that if a debtor is willing to wait long enough, he can probably get away with paying almost nothing, as long as he doesn’t mind hurting his credit score. So Santana knew he should jump at the offer. But as an amateur psychologist, Santana was eager to make his own diagnosis – and presumably boost his own commission.
As we’ve said repeatedly, AnnualCreditReport.com is the good website to go to when you need to pull a credit report, because it’s actually free. The others, including freecreditreport.com, use the promise of free the way an angler fish uses its forehead-worm-thing to trap dumb little fish. The FTC has decided to fight fire with fire by releasing its own jingles. To be honest, we’re not 100% sold on them—they have kind of a squaresville, PBS vibe, which is gonna really hamper their viral power. Check them out below.
Just like I figured, the reason Experian won’t sell you your FICO score anymore is because of a contract dispute with the Fair Issac corporation, and I’m guessing it has to do with the rollout of FICO ’08
If you aren’t planning on getting a big loan in the next couple of years, you probably shouldn’t be worried about your credit score right? Wrong.
A new system for determining your credit-worthiness, FICO ’08, rolls out this Thursday, and there’s nothing you can to do stop it. By these 6 changes, ye shall be judged:
SmartMoney’s Anne Kadet looked into the process by which the three major credit bureaus—Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax—investigate and correct errors on credit reports. What she found was that the process is “almost entirely automated,” and that “many lenders respond by simply rereporting the erroneous data.” Here’s how it works, and your meager options when something goes wrong.
Do you want to be one of over eight million identity theft victims? No, but most of the services sold by “identity theft protection” companies you can get for free. Here’s how.
At first glance, this ad for CreditReportAmerica seems to have the credit score system reversed, with 350-619 listed as “excellent” and 750-840 listed as “poor”…but then you realize it’s actually a graphical depiction of the system shady mortgage brokers used to get when whoring up the sub-prime mortgage orgy. Travel blogger Mark Ashley says he spotted the ad on the frontpage of Yahoo Finance. At the bottom, the ad says the service does not include credit scores. Remember folks, the place to get a free credit report is annualcreditreport.com.
Here it is folks, your semi-annual reminder that FreeCreditReport is not free. Free credit reports can be found at AnnualCreditReport.com. FreeCreditReport.com is a pay site. As in you will be billed. As in not free.
Just saw a (horribly produced) ad last night for freetriplescore.com, the latest in a long string piece of crap “free” credit score sites. As Chris Walters noted when he wrote about it, for the most part it’s a ripoff. But maybe there’s a way to pull a fast one of you own and get a free credit score…
Did you know there are more than three credit reporting agencies? Sure, you’ve heard of Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion, but what about Innovis? Smaller agencies can do just as much damage to your ability to get a good deal on credit as their bigger brethren. Learn how to pull your credit report from Innovis, inside.
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