This blog is a day early again. Tomorrow I've got mountains to climb and oceans to cross.
As a result of Clark Howard's suggestion about credit, I went to the website that provides free credit reports once a year, (www.annualcreditreport.com). There are 3 major credit report companies and each will provide you one credit report each year. Howards suggestion was to order one report every 4 months, each time from a different company. Then after a year you can start over and you can review your credit every 4 months for free forever.
Yep I'm listed. I'm in the data base of the "credit report" company. I worked my way through the security maze. I was assigned an account number. I was assigned a user name, a passwood and some secretive questions to answer the next time I try to get a report. Wah-laa! I got my credit report.
My employment data was slightly aged. The last job they had in the records was Artfaire which was 1986. I guess the 14 years of making cookies fell completely off the map.
The address of our current residence was correct as well as the Greenfield Street location along with the condo at Elkhart Lake.
There was a 48 month history of payments on credit cards and utilities. A total of 10 accounts are monitored on a continuing basis and I am rated by whether I am current with my payments or "late". Apparently it takes 4 years to work slow payments out of your credit report. There are 5 degrees of "late" payments.
And then there was a page of credit card companies that inquired about me in order to decide whether they should offer new credit cards to me. My list had 12 different companies that checked my financial history over two years. All this was in the guise of Promotional Inquiry.
And then there were 3 pages of companies that did "account review inquiries". Some inquires were from companies that I do existing business with and some were totally unknown to me. Again new credit card companies were listed. In total, 42 different inquiries were made over 2 years.
My comments would be that the report was extremely poor on employment information but the history of payments on different monthly accounts was really good. I was blown away by the number of companies that had access to my credit history over that last 2 years.
You do not get a credit "score" with the free credit report. For that you must pay an additional $7.95. I did not request my score. For that same amount of money I can get a quarter pounder at MacDonalds. According to Mr. Howard, a score of 700 or more is the tipping point. At 700 and above you will get favorable rates on everything from credit cards to mortgage rates. I'm just going to have to live out my life not knowing.
My primary reason for pursuing a credit report was to find out if I had any major negatives or disputes listed. I did not.
Check it out. You can find out for free whether the world has proper financial information on you. They are watching you! Woooooo!
Love,
Dad
And then there were 3 pages of