Most of have been there, that feeling of dread knowing that your wallet is gone! Its a terrible feeling! Here are some tips to help you back back on track and to minimize the potential impact this can have on your credit.
First think you will want to do is to start monitoring your credit with our credit monitoring services, you will want to watch for fraudulent activity for at least 90 days. Our credit monitoring will monitor all 3 of your credit reports for you, and it will send you an alert via, text, email, mail, or phone call if we detect any changes on your reports.
Next call your credit and debit card issuers and report that your card was stolen or lost. If you happen to be reading this post before a lost or stolen wallet take the time to right down your account numbers and customer service numbers and put them in a safe place for easy access! Lost and stolen cards are quite common, and your credit card and debit card company will have a team to assist you in closing down your cards, and reissuing new cards.
If you are sure that your wallet was stolen and not lost call the police department. While the police will not be able to help you track down your stolen wallet it is important to have on record a police report in case the thief tries to steal your identity. This will give you a legal record showing that you knew your wallet was stolen, and that you took the steps you needed to take to report the loss.
Try to think if there was anything else in the wallet that had your personal information on it. This could be a note that you wrote to yourself with a password on it, or anything else that could be used against you. If there is any chance that your passwords are compromised change them as soon as you can. Its better to be safe than sorry!
This is possibly the most painful step of all of them! Head tot he DMV to have your drivers licensed cancelled and a new one issued.
Having your wallet stolen is never a fun experience, but with these tips you can minimize any damage that could be done to your credit!
ShareCyber Monday is in full swing, and if your like me I would rather shop online than fight the crazy crowds at the store. Did you see that at one place a lady peeper sprayed fellow shoppers in order to get an XBOX! Yikes! Online shopping does come with its own risks, but I am fairly certain getting peeper sprayed is not one of them! Here are a few tips to protect yourself while you do your do your cyber Monday shopping.
Shop on sites you trust! Stick with sites you know and love. I am not saying that just because the site is well know that they are safe from cyber attacks, but you are much better off with a well known retailer. At the same time make sure you are really on the site you think you are. A common trick is to build a site that looks exactly as it should look, but have a slight misspelling in the domain name. Always check to make sure you are on the actual site and not a clone.
Make sure if you are completing a purchase that you are on a secure site. You can check this very easy by looking in the nav bar and looking for https:// vs http:// The S on the end means that you are connected to a secure site.
If you are shopping a new site that you have not been to before and creating a new account use a strong password. It is also important to use a different password for all the sites that you belong to. That way if one site gets hacked, they will not have your password for all other sites you belong to. Again I want to stress make it a strong password, capital letters, and numbers!
Stay off public WiFi if you are going to be making purchases, or logging into any accounts that may having your financial data. This could be banks, or credit unions, or shopping sites.
And as always keep an eye on your credit reports. If you are a member of our site, we will be doing this for you with your credit monitoring subscription so you will not have to worry!
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If you are in the market to enroll in a credit monitoring service, you in luck. Its Black Friday today and while everyone is out on the town searching for the best deals on holiday gifts, we have a great offer for you! Enroll in our credit monitoring and we will give you a free 2 week trial. Have complete access to your credit reports, and credit scores, and try out all the features of our award winning credit monitoring. Ok, so you caught us, we always offer a 2 week free trial, but I figured while I am at work today while everyone is out shopping, that I would like to be able to offer a Black Friday deal.
Yesterday while eating Thanksgiving dinner, I was asked what is the quickest and easiest way to increase a credit score. It took me off guard because I am not used to people asking me that question outside of a professional setting. And since it was family and friends I felt I could speak much less formally and get right to the point. The easiest and quickest way to raise your credit score is to enroll in the credit monitoring service and look over you credit reports. Find any information that in inaccurate and then dispute this information. Having information that is wrong on your credit reports will hurt your credit score, and will be a negative against you.
If you get this information removed, which should be as easy as a letter to the credit bureau that is reporting the wrong information and it will be removed. At that point it will come off your credit reports and your credit score will increase to where it should be. That is my recommendation for the quickest and easiest way to increase your credit score.
I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! I wish to personally thank everyone who has signed up for our credit monitoring, and who reads this blog. Our customers are the best there is, and I love being able to help them all get the best credit monitoring products on the market.
ShareI know we have said this over and over again, but it is so important to know what your credit score is, and if it is low, to raise it to a good or great level. Credit monitoring will help you see your progress as you being to raise your scores. Keeping tabs on your credit is vital, and many of us just do not have the time to keep monitoring our credit scores. This is where credit monitoring services shine!
We will provide you with all three of your credit scores.
We will track changes on all three of your credit reports, these can be changes you requested, or possible identity theft.
Having access to your three credit reports will allow you to find errors on your reports.
It can help you save money and time. By knowing what your credit scores are you will know exactly where you stand in the eyes of lenders. This will enable you to get the best deal possible, or decide to hold off until your credit score raises to the next bracket, which will save you money on anything you finance. And by being enrolled in our credit monitoring service you will constantly be updated on your credit score, that way you will know in advance if something is negatively effecting it, and you will be able to be proactive about fixing it to get your credit score back! This will indeed save time and make your life so much more simple.
Like most things in life, ignoring a problem such as a low credit score will not make it get any better. Credit monitoring will give you the tools you need to dig in and get your credit back on track!
ShareYou have managed to achieve a great credit score, something over 725 now what do you do with it? You have no plans to buy any large ticket items, your happy with your credit cards, your car is going to last you for 10 more years, and you recently bought your house. Things are looking great, but don’t rest to easy, you can use that great credit score to your advantage.
This is particular important to those of us who have been using the credit monitoring service to raise your credit score. Now that you have a fantastic score, its time to put it to use. You can use your score to get lower interest rates on purchases you have already made.
Say that you bought your car one or two years ago, and you had good credit at the time, or more importantly if you did not have good credit. Now that you have great credit you can call who ever holds your loan and ask them to lower you interest rate to reflect your new credit score. Many times they will tell you this can not be done, but don’t take no for an answer. Tell them that if they are not willing to work with you than you will just go elsewhere to refinance the loan. They will know that with your credit score that you will be able to do this easily and many times they will offer you a better rate on your current loan.
You can also use your credit score to your advantage when buying a new car. The dealership will make money on your financing, and often times they are locked into a certain rate which they just match your credit score too, and that is what you get. Many times this is not as good as a rate as you would get elsewhere if you secured your own financing. Use this to your advantage when negotiating. Print our your credit scores from your credit monitoring home page and bring them with you. How can you use this to get a better deal? Well the dealership will know that you will be able to get a better deal if you finance away from them, and they know that if you do this they will be losing out on some easy money. Use this fact to get them to take more off the bottom line of the car to make up for the difference you would get if you had a lower interest rate if you went elsewhere.
Some other easy places to save money every month with a great credit score is insurance. If your credit score has rising since you first signed up for your insurance then you can use that to lower your rates. Your credit score is a factor when it comes to insurance, and insurance companies will base your rates off of what your score was when you first enrolled. Call them up and ask them to lower your rates as your credit scores have raised and more often than not they will reduce your premium.
You should also negotiate with any credit cards that you have. If your rate is above 12% then it would be worth your time to call and ask for a significant rate reduction. With a credit score above 725 you should be looking at an interest rate of 6%-12%. Again at first they may be hesitant to lower your rates, but just know that you have the power in your hands, and that if worst case scenario they will not work with you move your business to a credit card that will give you the rates you deserve!
Keeping track of your credit scores with credit monitoring can really help you to save money, and to get your the best possible deals!
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Well of course we think so, but we are the providers of the service, so let me take a more nonobjective look at it. Some of the pro’s. It will help your prevent ID theft, it will let you monitor your credit reports, it will keep tabs on your credit scores. And then the cons the biggest con is the cost per month. Many critics claim that it may not be worth the monthly fee, I disagree.
First lets look at the obvious pros. Unlimited access to your credit report. Ok yeah not to exciting really, but its important. When you first sign up for credit monitoring you will want to go over your reports with a fine tooth comb to ensure all the information that is on the reports is up to date, and more importantly accurate. If there is any information that is inaccurate you can quickly address it, and make sure it gets removed. After that you will not need to look at your reports very often, as the service will monitor all your reports and if there are any changes made to your reports you will be notified by email.
Next pro is access to your credit scores, and not just one credit score like many other credit monitoring services offer, you will have access to all three scores. This is very important because this is how lenders see you, and your credit scores will determine what interest rate you will get on loans. Knowing your credit scores, and knowing what is effecting them in a negative way will help you to resolve and fix those credit errors, and help to improve your credit score. Going from a good to a great credit score can save you thousands of dollars over the term of a car loan, or even more on a mortgage.
And then one of the best reasons to sign up is to help your stay safe from identity thieves. This is by far the most critically argued benefits by critics of credit monitoring. These experts claim that credit monitoring services can not prevent ID theft. And since these services can not prevent ID theft, then they are not worth the cost per month. I agree, a credit monitoring service can not prevent ID theft on its own, but that’s not what it is meant to do. Its meant to be used as a tool to help you prevent ID theft, and then to protect you in the event that your ID is stolen.
I like to think of credit monitoring like I think of an alarm system on your home. It will not prevent you from being a victim of theft, but will will certainly alert you of a theft, and help you to take care of it in the quickest manner possible. If for example you are on vacation and a thief came to your home, if they heard the alarm, or if the cops show up very quickly you have a chance to catch the thieves, or lessen the amount they get away with. If you did not have the alarm system, the thieves could clean you out, and you would not know anything about it until you were home, at by that time it may be to late.
A credit monitoring service works the same way. There is no way to prevent you from becoming a victim of ID theft, but it will notify you as soon as it starts to happen, and that can prevent any damage from being done. ID theft works by the victim not knowing that they are a victim until months or years later, this will not happen if you sign up for a credit monitoring service. For this reason alone, plus all the other benefits, I think it is will worth the monthly cost.
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Thanksgiving is next week, and for many of us the last thing we want to think about is our credit scores. And to be honest I do not blame you, credit scores are just not that exciting, and most times you only think of them when you need them, like when you are looking to buy a large ticket item, or shopping for credit.
With the holidays approaching, many of us are looking forward to large meals, time with friends and family, and all the activities that come with the holiday season. And all this fun does come at an expense, I just read that the average person will gain 1.5 lbs the week of thanksgiving! And just like our food intake we often over indulge during the holidays financially. So if we think about our credit like we think about our weight, most of us will be packing on a few extra pounds. That in it self is not really all that bad, its what we do the weeks and months after that matters!
Just like with packing on a few pounds after the big turkey day meal, we have to work hard in the next few weeks after to get back to where we were before we had the great meal. Same with your credit, it is important to work hard in the upcoming weeks to get your credit to back to where it was before the holdiays.
The most important tip we can give is to make sure you pay your bills on time! This can get tricky as we get so busy from now until after the Christmas holidays. Forgetting to pay some of your bills is easy to do, but do not let that happen. Missing a payment can have a huge impact on your hard earned credit score. That simple mistake could take you months to fully recover from!
Try not to spend more than you can pay off in a timely fashion. Carrying a large balance on your credit cards will also hurt your credit scores.
And the last big tip is to be very diligent with your financial data. Around the holiday season there is often a large rise in ID theft. Many of us are so busy during this period that our normal defenses can slip a bit, and it can be easier for would be thieves to get a hold of our personal information.
With access to your credit monitoring account you will have all the tools you need to monitor your credit scores, and to see what is effecting them in a negative way. Think of it like your bathroom scale, just step on it a few times during the holidays, and make sure you are not gaining to much weight! (Lowering your credit scores). Then use our tips in tricks in our blog to find the best way to get your credit score back in check.
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For many stendents its close to mid terms. I thought it would be a good idea to quiz our readers on credit monitoring, credit reports and credit scores. Get your number 2 pencils out, take a seat, and no peeking off your neighbors!
1) How many credit bureaus are there?
2) What is considered a “good” credit score? Anything over:
3) What impacts your credit score the most?
4) Are creditors required by law to report your account information to the credit bureaus?
5) Does enrolling in a credit monitoring service hurt your credit score?
6) Canceling old credit cards will improve my score.
7) Can a potential employer use your credit score as a hiring factor?
Unsolicited credit card offers effect your credit score.
9) Your age, gender, and income effect your credit score.
Answers:
1) Answer is c) 3
Experian, Equifax, and Transunion. These 3 credit bureaus provide the United States will the credit data that is shown on your credit reports. It is important to check all 3 credit reports as they can show different information. Not all your creditors will choose to report to all 3 bureaus.
2) Answer is c) 700
Most lenders will consider anything over 700 to be a good credit score, this will give you access to very good credit rates. 700 and above is a great goal for all of us to maintain.
3) Answer is a) Payment History
Paying your debts on time will have the most impact on your credit score, positively and negatively. If you constantly pay your debts on or before the payment due date, your credit score will rise. Consequently if you pay past the due date your credit score will fall. The other factors will effect your scores, but your payment history has the largest impact.
4) Answer is b) No.
There is no law on the books that requires your creditors to report your accounts or payment history to the credit bureaus.
5) Answer is b) No.
Signing up for a credit monitoring service will not hurt your credit score. There are 2 types of credit inquiry’s hard and soft. A hard inquiry is what you get when you apply for credit, and yes this will hurt your credit score. A soft inquiry is when you pull your credit score these will not hurt your credit score. Learn more about hard and soft inquiry’s.
6) Answer b) False
When you close down a credit card, your available credit will decrease, and this in turn will lower your credit score. One of the factors used in calculating your credit score is your available credit limit. When you close an open account that amount decreases and this will effect your credit score.
7) Answer a) Yes
Yes potential employers can use your credit score as a factor in order to make a decision on whether to hire you or not to hire you. Keep up to date on this issue on our blog, we here at Best Credit Reports are against this, and will keep you up to date on lobbying efforts to get this removed as a factor in which you can be hired on.
Answer b) No
Those annoying unsolicited credit card offers we all get will not effect your credit score. The way they work is the company who wants you to sign up for the credit card will buy a list of names from the credit bureaus. Generally they will buy lists with a certain set of credit scores. And if you happen to fall within the range the credit card company is looking for, you will get mail!
9) b) No
Your age, gender and income have no effect on your credit scores!
To learn your credit scores to day, enroll in our free trial of credit monitoring.
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I was at the store today, and just two days after Halloween, Christmas is up and running! What happened to Thanksgiving? Did I sleep through it, or did the Halloween Zombies run off with it? Regardless, the shopping season starts sooner and sooner every year.
Here are some tips to keep your credit safe during the hectic holiday season.
1. Gifts that are bought on your credit cards, that are not paid off during the grace period will end up costing you a lot! I know the holidays are tough, and we want to please everyone, but if you can avoid buying your holiday gifts on credit. Its a bit late this season, but if you can you can try to save a little bit every month for your holiday spending money. It may be hard to do this in March as the holidays seem so far away, but if you save a little bit every month during the year you will have a nice holiday next egg, and will not have to break out your credit cards.
2. If you find that you have to use your credit cards during this holiday season, know that you may get a hit to your credit score as your balances increases (Check out this article on credit scores) you will approach your maximum credit limit. As you approach your credit limit your score will decrease as a result. Keep this in mind that if in the spring you plan to make a major purchase, as you will not get the best loan rate until you get your holiday balances back in to around 30% of your credit limit.
3. The lure of a discount if you sign up for a store credit account. Sure the 20% discount sounds really nice, but in reality its very naughty. I know all of you out there have at one point when shopping the perky clerk will say “Would you like to save 20% on your purchase today?” I have any instantly my mind does the math and it sounds great! So whats the harm? The catch is that you will need to sign up for another credit card. Again many of you might be saying whats the harm if I never use the card? Well first off you will get a hard inquiry on your credit report, which will have a negative effect on your credit score. Second you may or may not be approved for that new credit card. And if you are approved most of the time these cards have a small limit. Again, whats the harm? Well with such a small limit it will be very easy to max out the card, and see number 2, showing an account with maxed out credit will have a negative effect on your credit! And if those are not enough reasons to stay away from that 20% discount, take the annual APR of that credit card into account, you will soon be spending more in interest than you saved with the discount.
You can keep track of all three of your credit scores, and protect your credit when you enroll in our award winning credit monitoring!
ShareAre they the same? If not what the difference?
First off, now your credit report and credit scores are different. Your credit report is information about your credit life, it has accounts, balances, limits, inquiry, and personal information such as where you live. Your credit score is all these factors put into a score, it shows exactly how risky you would be to give credit. It is also very important to note that you have three credit scores, once from each of the three major credit reporting companies, Transunion, Equifax and Experian.
What about FICO? FICO is score generated by the Fair Issac Corporation. It used to be the most widely used credit score until recent years. The Credit Bureaus who own the data that was used to generate FICO scores have come up with their own credit scores, which are now widely used by many lenders. The scores we provide are generated be the three credit bureaus and are not FICO scores. You will receive all three of your credit scores when you enroll in our credit monitoring program.
Ok so then what is the deal with a free credit report from annualcreditreport.com? Every American is entitled to a free credit report every year, and it is done through the Annual Credit Report.com website, which is a great resource if you want to check your credit report. The problem is, you will not have access to your credit score, and without that, well, what good is it? We want to see our report card, not the work we have done right? Well there is some benefit, if you choose not to enroll in a credit monitoring program, then you will be able to scan your report for errors. The problem is you only have access to this once per year, so if someone has stolen your identity, then well, hopefully it was right before you checked it out! If not you will have quite a bit of clean up work to do.
I hope that clears it up for some of you out there! I know its all a bit confusing, but to keep it simple just remember, that your credit report is your file, all your history of anything credit related. The more credit you have over the years the larger this file will be.
Your credit score, it goes up and down all the time, and this is your report card, it will tell you on the day you check it where you stand in the eyes of potential lenders. Do not be discouraged if your score is lower than you are happy with. By following this blog, and reading the articles on here, we will give you advice on how to boost your score, and get it to exactly where you want it to be!
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