You’ve heard all about the ever-important credit score, right? You’ve got to have a good one if you’re looking to buy a house or get a car loan with a reasonable interest rate—or even get approved for the loan in the first place. A recent development is that a bad credit score can even keep you from getting good insurance rates or some jobs. But what, really, is your credit score? How do they come up with that number and what’s actually a “good” number to have? [Read more →]
I’ve heard before that you should photocopy everything in your wallet as a “backup” technique should it be stolen. Of course, there are privacy issues with photocopies made on copiers that have hard drives, and legal constraints on whether or not you can create color copies at 100% of certain types of ID. Here’s what I recommend: [Read more →]
Don’t let those cute and catchy commercials trick you into paying for your credit reports when you can get them for free. By law, you can request a copy of your report from each of the three major credit reporting agencies (Equifax, Experian, TransUnion) once every twelve months.
There are three ways to request the reports: [Read more →]