Checking your credit report is as easy as visiting a website and entering your personal information, and other parties can access your report when a loan or credit is involved. There are two types of credit checks: hard and soft. Do you know the difference.
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Last week, in the biggest case of identity theft ever, 11 men in five countries were charged with stealing more than 40 million credit card numbers from US retailers. Unfortunately, 73 percent of you aren't strangers to having your credit card information compromised, but it seems that some of us might be in the dark about our card's safety.
According to The Wall Street Journal, most states require full disclosure to customers when credit-card data is stolen from a company's stores.
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Acquiring your free credit report is relatively simple: Just remember to visit AnnualCreditReport.com for up to three reports each year, not tricky FreeCreditReport.com.
Unfortunately, getting your free credit score isn't as direct. There are certain little loopholes that can get you a complimentary score, but there also a handful of legitimate circumstances that grant you a free credit score — no slick loopholes required.
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You know it's important to maintain your own credit identity when you're married, but here's what ehadams is curious about: "What happens to credit when you get married. For example, if he has bad (or no credit) and you have excellent credit, what happens?" The answer to this is less complicated than going through the process of changing your last name. Find out what it is when you .
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You may assume your husband's last name when you get married and you might even merge bank accounts. Just as you maintain an individual identity outside of your husband and your new last name, you need to protect yourself by sustaining your own credit profile. This can be accomplished even if you combine checking and savings accounts.
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Dear Savvy,
My boyfriend's family has had a lot of money problems in the past few years that they kept hidden from him. Things all came out in the open when he was kicked out of school because his parents couldn't pay his tuition, which they had told him was already paid. Turns out they had almost lost their house and had to resort to opening credit cards in both his and his brother's names, which they couldn't afford to make payments on.
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TransUnion, one of the three national credit bureaus, has settled a class action lawsuit with winning terms for credit holding consumers. If you had any open lines of credit from January 1, 1987 until May 28, 2008 you are eligible to receive free 24-hour credit monitoring from TransUnion for up to nine months. Find out what the free service includes and how to file a claim when you .
According to CNN, you can choose between TransUnion's Basic and Enhanced services.
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We're all eligible to receive three free credit reports every year (one from each of the national credit bureaus), but credit scores typically come at a cost of $15.95 per score. There are some unreliable sites out there that may claim to have access to free credit scores, but generally those sites aren't trustworthy.
MyFICO.com is actually a division of Fair Issac, the company that calculates consumer credit ratings for lenders, and is a legitimate source of credit information.
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Dear Savvy,
Yesterday I got a notice that I owe the IRS for a 2-year-old tax error. The amount is more than I have and I have only one option of paying it and that is to make payments. I called the IRS and they said that I could make payments for up to 60 months at 6 percent interest and there is a $105 dollar fee.
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