Showing posts with label credit repair. Show all posts
Showing posts with label credit repair. Show all posts

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Check Your Credit For Free! No Catch!

I've already told you about how to get your free credit report from Annualcreditreport.com. But it turns out there's another way to get not only your credit report, but also your credit score, profile and other extras for free. No, I'm not kidding.

I stumbled on this site by accident after my husband won a year of free credit monitoring from Quicken Loans. They're currently doing a sweepstakes, which I found on Freebies4Mom. Anyway, I decided to see who this company was who was doing the credit monitoring. It's called Quizzle.

They do offer other optional upgraded services for a fee (including helping you with a budget and giving you credit improvement tips), but you get quite a bit for free and you don't have to purchase anything or give them your credit card number. You don't even give them your social security number. How then, do they look up your credit report? With your name, address and birthdate.

You can find out more about the company in their FAQ section. Go check it out and stay informed!

Saturday, September 11, 2010

If You're "HAMP-Y" and You Know It, Clap Your Hands!!!

We finally did it! We got our modification. It took nearly a year and a half since we first applied, but it's a done deal. We got the signed papers back from the bank last week and the new statement came in the mail with our lowered payment.

A Bank of America service agent told me that they've also put in the order to fix our credit, so that it will show that we've been current (this should be a big boost to our credit scores, which took a big hit when they wrongly reported us as delinquent during our year-long "trial" period).

It's been a long drawn out process, but I'm so happy that we saw it through to the end. I'm sleeping much better at night now. I know my prayers have been heard and I'm so thankful for how this has turned out.

I'd like to caution any of you out there who are trying to modify your mortgages, to watch out for the scammers out there. I know of people in our neighborhood, as well as family members of friends, who have gone to and paid outside sources to help them save their homes, only to watch their homes go into foreclosure when they've been told by the company they hired that everything was fine. Please make sure you check with the Better Business Bureau before paying ANYONE to help you.

Help is out there. You can do it on your own, as we did; or there are companies that can help you for free. For more information on this process, you can read about our experiences and all we've found out here.

God Bless!

Monday, March 2, 2009

Find out about Your Credit for Free

This is such an important subject, and one that is too often overlooked by so many people. Do you know what's on your credit report? There was a time, I'm ashamed to admit, that I could actually say no to that question. Once I set out to change that (when we were interested in buying a house), I had a crash course in credit bureaus, credit scores and credit repair.

You can go to www.annualcreditreport.com and get all three of your credit reports for free, without having to get out your credit card or subscribe to a service. This site takes you to Equifax, Transunion and Experian. You can do it all in one visit, or you can spread it out over the year. Since it takes you directly to the credit bureaus' sites, you can also take action immediately if you find errors on your credit report. You can use this site to gain access to your reports once a year for each credit bureau.

You might not think that there would be errors on your credit report, but you could very well be wrong. We found out, by doing this very check-up, that there was another man, living in our state, who shares my husband's exact name. I only wish I were kidding. We found hospital bills, cell phone bills and judgments against this other man on my husband's credit report. It was easy enough to fix once we found it, since the social security numbers and birthdays didn't match up, but if we hadn't fixed it, it could have prevented us from getting any credit.

Errors do matter and they can affect whether or not you get a job, how much you pay for insurance, whether or not you're approved for a loan and even whether or not a landlord will approve your application for renting a place.

If you find an error in your report, you don't have to hire anyone to fix it. It's so easy to fix it yourself. You dispute the item online (which can be done at the credit bureau's website), or even over the phone if you prefer. You will also want to call the company that is involved in the item you're disputing to make the updated report go through faster (and in your favor).

We had so many errors in our report, that by the time I was finished disputing and making phone calls, our credit rating went up about 100 points. This dramatically lowered the interest rates we qualified for, and our home and auto insurance rates were dropped quite a bit as well.

Also know that if you have been turned down for credit, refused insurance or lost out on a job because of your credit, this automatically entitles you to a free credit report. So don't be afraid to get yours ASAP!

Here are the credit bureaus websites. You cannot access your free yearly credit reports by using these though. For that, use the link I gave you at the beginning of this blog.

www.experian.com
www.transunion.com
www.equifax.com

For more information on credit issues, check out this site I found:
http://www.completecreditservices.com