My Credit Guide

Money Makeover Getting Results

2006-06-28T10:53:00.000-07:00

Financial Expert Works With Texas Family To Shave Off Debt

CBSNews.com

(CBS) Getting out of debt is not easy as our "Money Makeover" couple Tim and Nina Davis know. They started working with The Early Show's financial expert Dave Ramsey four months ago and are beginning to shave away their debt.

Just this week, the family hit a major financial milestone, paying off some back taxes.

"Well, it was our first goal since we started the 'Total Money Makeover' and it was hard because it was such a big number to start with. And it would have been a lot easier to pay some of our smaller credit cards first, but the importance of the real estate taxes made it the priority," says Nina. "And we had hoped we would be able to pay those out of our budget just excess monies from our budget.

"But after a couple months we could see it was taking all of our resources from income just to maintain our expenses. So about a month ago, we started thinking of other alternatives that we might come up with to pay those taxes and really get the debt snowball going. We cashed in a small whole life policy that brought us a little over $2,000. And then we sold a third vehicle. Yesterday, we wrote the check and mailed it and we are paid up on real estate taxes."

Ramsey had some great tips for the Davis family. They included cashing out their life policy, negotiating with credit companies and even selling the third family car, Tim's truck.

Tim says parting with his truck wasn't too bad. "I know it was something that needed to be done. It made it a little bit easier," he tells The Early Show co-anchor Hannah Storm.

Asked how it feels to have this $4,000 debt off his back, Tim says: "It feels great. I mean, it's something hanging over our heads for a while. We had big relief that we finally it taken care of."

When Dave Ramsey began working with Tim and Nina, they were in pretty bad financial shape.

"They were behind on a lot of things, credit cards and real estate taxes were behind. Just getting them up to current has been the first big step," Ramsey recalls. "You know, it's just a matter of doing the little things. We've talked — Tim and Nina and I have talked over the phone. It's a matter of incremental progress. My favorite book is the 'Tortoise and the Hare.' The tortoise always wins the race."

Tim got a higher paying job, while Nina got a second part-time job. In addition, the couple began selling off some of their antique glassware on eBay.

Nina says her new part-time job has made a big difference.

"It's been for a lot of reasons. The extra money is about $400 a month, but that's big," she says. "We decided ahead of time that we would take a hundred percent of that money and put it toward debt or else once we decided to sell the truck toward saving for another car. So that's been big. But it made our family work together. With me being gone on Friday evening and Saturday, the kids and Tim take care of the grocery shopping and the laundry and some other things so it's helped us as a family, too."

Meanwhile, the couple's teenage daughter Lacy got a summer job at a youth camp, and is now paying some of her own expenses.

Asked if the process of financial recovery is going slower than he thought or whether it is easy to stay motivated, Tim says: "Well, it is going slower than we thought it would. Sometimes it's been a little trouble to stay motivated but we've managed to keep it going."

Dave Ramsey says incremental changes, coupled with a game plan can get the job done.

"I like the theme of this whole discussion this morning … It's going to be incremental," Ramsey explains. "Develop a long-term game plan. Where do you want to be when you grow up? Where do you want to be five years, 20 years from now? It's a step-by-step thing. We want to microwave everything but personal finance is a crock pot."

Three Big Mistakes in Retirement Planning

2006-04-04T07:02:00.000-07:00

Three Big Mistakes in Retirement Planning
by Ben Stein

Monday, April 3, 2006
[Ben Stein]

A few days ago, I sat at an outdoor café on Las Olas Street in beautiful Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and had a dismally tasteless lunch. Next to me was my lovely wife of many decades and a friend from the movie business who now lives in Florida. The friend is in trouble.

He had gone through a magnificent career in Hollywood as a high official at a very big studio, the head of two major production companies, and a reputation as big as a Cadillac. Then, very relentlessly, his career unraveled or imploded or maybe just plain went away.

Partly, the problem was that he was tired of Hollywood. But partly it was also that in Hollywood, age is everything, and by his mid-fifties, he was considered too old to be totally hip to what the young moviegoer wants to see.

A Basic Idea Too Commonly Ignored

So far, it's a typical picture of life in Hollywood. It happens to everyone. The difference with my friend -- and with many friends I have in Hollywood -- is that this man, whom I will call Kevin, has made a foolish mistake. In fact, he has made a few foolish mistakes, and these cost him dearly.

His first mistake had to do with probably as basic an idea in consumer finance as there is -- and likely the most frequently ignored and misunderstood. It was explained to me in stark, stunningly brilliant terms by my friend and colleague, Ray Lucia, a nationally operating Certified Financial Planner, host of a huge national radio talk show about money, frequent guest on Fox News, rock singer, and generally supersmart guy.

The key in financial life, Ray told me when we first met years ago, is to "match your liabilities with assets."

That is, for every liability that's going to come down the pike, Ray explained, you must have a matching asset to meet it. My pal Kevin, like about 40 million other Baby Boomers racing towards retirement, had not taken the time and trouble to plan for the largest possible liability -- retirement. He mostly just never thought about it.

But when he did think about it, he engaged in what psychiatrists call "magical thinking". He thought he would somehow one day just strike it so rich that money would fall from the sky. Thus, he didn't save, didn't make a retirement plan, and just hoped for the best.

Life Happens

Alas, money didn't fall from the sky. Instead, he left the Hollywood labor force about 10 years earlier than he'd thought he would. He had some modest savings and a small inheritance, so he didn't starve. And he has a house he will soon sell. But he didn't make provision even remotely adequate for maintaining his pre-retirement lifestyle. Now he's tortured by anxiety, had to drastically shrink his lifestyle, and is just plain sad.

The second giant mistake he made, embedded in the first, was in failing to foresee that in life, the bad scenario can and does often happen. It's not called "life" for nothing. Kevin should have realized that he would probably be the victim of age-ism, like so many of us. He planned for the most optimistic outcome, but that scenario rarely happens.

http://www.my-credit-guide.com

Program teaches students about credit cards

2006-03-31T09:26:00.001-08:00

Program teaches students about credit cards
3/29/2006 3:29 PM
By: Danielle Strauss

When Albany High School seniors graduate in a few months, they'll be faced with all kinds of temptations. Whether they are in college or out in the "real world," they could make a decision that could follow them for the rest of their lives -- signing up for a credit card.

Teacher Mary DeMarco said, "When they go to school next year, they will see all these tables offering t-shirts and coolers. If you grab those cards and leave them in your drawer, it can have a negative effect."

To prevent the kids from falling into the credit trap, DeMarco enlisted the help of the Credit Abuse Resistance Education program, or C.A.R.E. Lawyers from the area are pointing out the pros and cons of credit cards. On the plus side, students get to establish credit and work toward maintaining good credit history. But the down side is credit card abuse and spiraling into debt with bills students simply can't or don't pay.

It's a fact that between 1994 and 2004, bankruptcy among people under the age of 25 rose 96 percent. After hearing more students drop out of school because of credit card debt than bad grades, these kids said they don't want to be a target.

Credit cards and students

C.A.R.E. is teaching high school seniors what to look out for when they hit college campuses.

Senior Deborah Chesser said, "I'm going to have to shop around and see what is the best for me, check the credit, see if there is any fine print I will have to look for. Then I will sign the line and see what happens from there."

Senior Jajmere Williams said, "I'm kinda worried because I know I can be impulsive at times. I know I will have to be in control. I have to pay my own way through college. Being in debt isn't the best thing for me."

Both Williams and Chesser said they most likely will sign up for a credit card. But to stay in the black, they said they'll try and choose paper instead of plastic as much as possible

http://www.my-credit-guide.com/

Program teaches students about credit cards

2006-03-31T09:26:00.000-08:00

Taking Control of Your Finances

2006-03-27T14:01:00.000-08:00

Some days, it seems that corporate America might just be out to get us. Offering a wide variety of tantalizing products and services almost everywhere we look, the industry moguls that operate these big businesses then offer us friendly payment plans that allow us have what we want when we want it. Even though we realize that these payment plans exist to line more deeply the pockets of the company's shareholders, we submit, sometimes committing to pay more than we can afford.

That's not to say that payment plans are entirely evil, or that they can't be used to enrich our quality of life when wisely adapted to fit our means. While interest rates on credit and store cards can be extremely high, these financial tools are useful ways to gain the benefit of using something now, when we might not have the funds to pay for it readily available, and paying for it when that check comes in.

But, for a wide variety of reasons, we sometimes take on more than we should - it is all too easy to stumble into the debt trap. A couple of missed payments because money has had to be directed to other, more pressing expenses, and we are already slipping into a hole that can be extremely difficult to extricate our finances from.

While corporate America might suffer from a bad reputation, it has not lost all sense of humanity, and by working with debt consolidation companies, big business has proven itself very willing to work with those of us in debt. Our inability to meet our financial obligations can also be quite costly for them, as they are forced to call in expensive debt collection agencies and possibly deal with the long, drawn out process of our bankruptcy. Cooperating with our debt consolidation efforts, however, costs them very little in comparison, and it is this reduced cost to them that ultimately creates their eagerness to work with the companies that make debt consolidation an enormously viable option for those of us trying to cope with debt.

The work of debt consolidation companies is simple - once you contact them and provide them with a clear picture of your financial situation, they assess your various debts, and then present you with one monthly figure that they have established will repay your creditors over an agreed period of time. The net effect to you is that your monthly outgoings are significantly reduced, and that those overwhelming overdue notices cease their ingress into your home.

The best debt consolidation firms are well known by the companies likely to be your creditors, and are thus in a position to negotiate favorable results for you. As previously mentioned, big businesses are usually all too grateful to receive any regular payment from you, even if they have to reduce their interest rates to do so, and prolong the duration of your obligation to them. A debt consolidation firm can negotiate a payment you can realistically afford over a time period that is manageable for you, allowing you to pay off your debts at a rate that is within your means.

Perhaps the greatest service that debt consolidation firms can provide is that of peace of mind. Financial worries are one of the greatest causes of stress in this country, affecting health and personal relationships in equal measure. Formulating a payment plan that you can realistically afford with a debt consolidation firm removes the looming threat of the debt collector from your threshold, allowing you to concentrate on getting your life, both financially and otherwise, back to where you want it to be.

http://www.my-credit-guide.com

Credit Scoring : About your Credit Score

2006-03-13T11:52:00.000-08:00

Fair, Isaac & Co. says FICO scores are based on the following factors:

- What is your payment history? Roughly 35 percent of your score.

Have you paid your bills on time? Your score reflects payment information on credit cards, retail accounts, installment loans (loans with regular payments, such as car loans), finance company accounts and mortgage loans.

MyWineDirect Banner Generally, a payment that's 30 days late is not as bad as a payment that is 90 days late. But a 30-day late payment made a month ago will count against you more than a 90-day-late payment from five years ago. How frequently you're late also counts.

- Do you owe too much? 30 percent of your score.

Owing money on various credit accounts doesn't automatically lead to a low score, but some borrowing patterns can hurt. Fair Isaac's model weighs what is owed against the initial balances on installment loans and the lending limits on credit cards and other "revolving" accounts. The weight given to any factor may vary, depending on other aspects of your credit profile. Also, although scores are based only on the information in your Credit Report, lenders may look at other factors when making a credit decision, such as your income and the kind of credit you are applying for.

- How established is your credit? 15 percent of your score.

"In general, a longer credit history will increase your score," Fair Isaac says. "However, even people with short credit histories may get high scores, depending on how the rest of the Credit Report looks."

- Do you have a "healthy" mix of credit? 10 percent of your score.

The score considers your mix of credit cards, retail accounts, installment loans, finance company accounts and mortgage loans. "It is not necessary to have one of each, and it is not a good idea to open credit accounts you don't intend to use," Fair Isaac says.

- Are you taking on more debt? 10 percent of your score.

"Research shows that opening several credit accounts in a short period of time does represent greater risk," Fair Isaac says.

Your score also may be affected by repeated applications for credit, though the model treats multiple inquiries in a short period of time as a single inquiry, to avoid penalizing consumers for shopping for the best rate.

http://www.my-credit-guide.com

Credit Repair : Fix your credit one step at a time.

2006-03-13T11:50:00.000-08:00

What the information provided in this page does is help you fix ERRORS on your credit report and clean up those "questionable" items. While no one can legally remove accurate negative information from a credit report, the law does allow you to request a reinvestigation of information in your file that you dispute as inaccurate or incomplete. On the otherhand, *nudge* *nudge*, *wink* *wink*, it is perfectly legal to challenge ANYTHING on your credit report. There is no charge for requesting an investigation. The whole key to the credit repair procedure is that if the credit bureaus cannot verify information on your credit report they must remove it. For instance, if a credit bureau cannot contact a collection agency which is reporting a collection on your report, they cannot verify the information, and the credit bureau must delete the entry. Let's meet Mike.

MyWineDirect Banner Mike’s car, a hand-me-down from his father, is ready to give up the ghost. His girlfriend, Charisse, suggests he try to buy a newer car, though he is reluctant to spend the money. Although Mike makes a great living, his credit is in terrible shape due to a large number of unpaid medical bills, the result of an accident. Mike has seen advertisements in the local paper for credit repair services, and wonders how easy and how expensive it would be to fix his credit. Charisse makes a few calls for Mike looking into credit repair agencies and is suspicious of them. Besides, she once successfully disputed a late payment on her credit report. Mike and Charisse decide to see what they can do on their own to fix Mike’s credit.

Basic Credit Repair Strategy
The basic strategy to repairing your credit is as follows:

* Get and review your credit report.
* Analyze your report.
* Make a list of all items you consider to be questionable or negative. Clearly identify each item in your report that you dispute, explain why you dispute the information,
* Write a dispute letter bureaus.
* Send the letter to the credit bureaus. Make sure you send it registered or certified mail.
* Document your efforts.Record when you sent your letters, and the results.
* Wait for the bureaus to investigate your claims.
* Analyze the results.
* Specialized techniquesWas the item deleted or changed to your satisfaction? You may continue steps 1, 2 and 3 above until you feel the dispute is settled satisfactorily. Remember, there is no charge for a reinvestigation. If you don’t get the results you want, dispute the listing again.

That's all there is to it. Seems easy enough but you must have patience, because the credit bureaus are not always very cooperative. They make their money by providing credit reports to lenders not by fixing bad information in their databases.

1. Get your credit report.
To obtain free copies of your report, please see Getting and reading your credit report.

Mike contacted each of the credit bureaus, and paid $9.50 each for credit reports from Experian, TransUnion, and TRW. Total outlay so far: $28.50. Note: this is cheaper than the $34.95 charged by many some companies selling a 3-1 credit report.

2. Analyze your credit report.
You can analyze your credit as outlined in "Decoding Your Report".

After reviewing his credit reports, Mike made copies, then highlighted everything he saw as a negative listing. Most of them were medical collections, and were easy to spot. However, he does notice that one of the bureaus is reporting him as late on a payment to one of his credit cards, and he knows he paid it on time.

3. Rank questionable/negative items
Step 2 covered how to identify items, both positive and negative on your credit report. Now you have this list, you should rank each item according to the amount of damage they are doing to your overall credit picture. Rank the most damaging information first, followed by the next most damaging information, followed by those items which are neutral. Do this for each credit report, as remember, they may not all have the same information on them. They may even have duplicate information. If this is the case, you will need to write to each credit agency individually for each duplicate item.

The items here are listed in order of descending importance with the first item being the "most damaging" to your credit.

* Bankruptcy
* Foreclosure
* Repossession
* Loan Default
* Court Judgments
* Collections
* Past due payments
* Late Payments
* Credit Rejections
* Credit Inquiries

Also, if your creditor has NOT notified you of negative information they have recently placed on your credit report, they are currently in violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. You can use this to pressure the original creditor to remove the listing by reminding them they are in violation of the FCRA by not notifying you.

4. Requesting Corrections and Disputing Your Credit

What should you challenge?
Everything, and you should always shoot for a complete deletion. Don't bother challenging the information within a collection listing, charge-off, court record, repossession, foreclosure, or settled account. As the basic nature of these listings is negative, changing the information within the listing will yield no improvement. Severely negative listings, such as these, must be disputed on the basis of complete deletion or not be disputed at all.

What items are the toughest to get off your report?
You will have the toughest time getting bankruptcies and foreclosures off of your credit report as these things are so easy for the credit bureaus to verify. In the case of a bankruptcy, you most likely will have a few trade lines saying "included in Bankruptcy". If you want to challenge your bankruptcy, you need to clear off all credit lines mentioning a BK FIRST.

Mike decided to challenge each and every one of his collections, as well as his credit card late payment. He wrote a letter that:

Write a letter that:

* listed each of his negative listings by name, collection agency and amount of the delinquency
* Under each of the list accounts, he said he was disputing the accuracy.
* He also included his Name, SSN, Address, and a copy of his driver's license.
* Mike sent his letters via Express Mail, which gives him a receipt for the mailing, and guarantees delivery. Total expense for Express Mail: $36.
* Here is an example letter.

5. Make sure you send everything registered or certified mail.
This is important, as you must be able to tell when letters were sent and received. It gives you some leverage with the CRAs if they don't respond in the time frame required by law. For certified mail tips and tricks, read this.

6. Document Your Credit Repair Efforts
As soon as you have ordered your credit reports and photocopied your order letters and checks, you must create a precise organizational system to track your correspondences with the credit bureaus and your creditors. Why is this necessary? Unfortunately, credit items you have worked so hard to remove mysteriously reappear. If this happens, it is usually easy to have the items deleted permanently if you show your complete records on the first removal. Why take a chance? As you proceed through these steps, keep copies and records of all correspondence you send and receive. Copies of all correspondence are a must, as well as notes on all telephone conversations! Also, if you should encounter any special difficulty and would like help in repairing your credit, you will need these records to proceed.

Every time you have a telephone conversation with a creditor, you must document the conversation by recording the name of the person to whom you spoke, his or her position, the date and time of the conversation, what was said in the conversation, and what was agreed upon.

Mike used his Palm Pilot to record when he sent his letters, and put his mail receipts and copies of his letters in a safe place.

7. Wait for the credit bureau to finishing investigating
Once the credit reporting agency has received your dispute letter, they are obligated to investigate. This obligation is not contingent upon you having been denied credit. According to the Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1997 (see Attachment 3), the credit bureaus must take the following steps:

* The credit reporting agencies must resolve consumers' disputes within 30 days limit
* In response to consumers' complaints that documentation in support of their disputes was disregarded, the credit bureaus have to consider and transmit to the furnisher all relevant evidence submitted by the consumer the first time.
* Consumers will receive written notice of the results of the investigation within five days of its completion, including a copy of the amended credit file if it changed based on the dispute.
* Once information is deleted from a credit file, the credit bureaus can not reinsert it unless the entity supplying the information certifies that the item is complete and accurate and the credit bureau notifies the consumer within five days.

The Federal Trade Commission says that inaccurate credit reports are the number-one source of consumer complaints, and that it is quite common for problems to take six or more months to be resolved. All of the big-three agencies are working on making sure that all disputes are handled within 30 days.

If the new investigation reveals an error, you may ask that a corrected version of the report be sent to anyone who received your report within the past six months. Job applicants can have corrected reports sent to anyone who received a report for employment purposes during the past two years. However, this is unlikely to repair any damage done when your credit report was first pulled, so don’t waste your time or energy on this approach.

8. Evaluate the results of your repair efforts.
You did save the original credit report your ordered, didn’t you? And each item you challenged? Good, you will need them to evaluate how well you did. It’s all part of Step 5 above, documenting your efforts.

When you get your “repaired” credit report back from the credit bureaus, they will summarize what changed on your credit report due to your challenges. You can compare this list to your own notes or just to the previous credit report.

9. Specialized techniques:
Depending on the type of listing, you may also want to try these separate techniques:

* Collections - you should always try to use the debt validation technique on collections. This should be in addition to your credit repair efforts with the credit bureaus.
* Charge-offs. Try disputing the information within the listing, like the date the account was opened, the high balance, the amount owed, etc. If any of the information is incorrect, you have a good chance of getting the whole thing deleted off of your report.
* Judgments. If you were never served for a judgment, you may have a chance of getting it vacated (voided), or there may be other technicalities that you can use. Check out our new section on how to do this.

The results of each item will have been resolved in one of five different ways:

* If the listing is not mentioned in the results list, you must have forgotten to include it, or your request was not sufficiently clear. You will need to dispute the item again in your next dispute letter. The bureaus are legally obligated to respond in writing within 30 days, so if they don't, it is highly unlike they are ignoring you.
* The disputed item was investigated but verified.If you don’t get the item removed, most likely, the credit bureaus will have just given you a cryptic reason as to why like “item verified”.The creditor may have responded to the credit bureau's request for re-verification. They may have simply said that the listing was correct, and in this case, the bureau will take their word for it. Now it is up to you to prove to the bureau that the item is not correct. The law required that the bureaus accept any proof you may submit, as well as to pass any documentation you provide on to your creditor for consideration, so be sure to send any documentation you can, if you didn’t do it the first time. You could also try disputing the listing again at a future time. Who knows, you may get lucky, and a different employee of the creditor may not be able to verify the item.
* The disputed listing was investigated as to the correctness of the information within the listing (such as late pay notations) and the listing was found to be inaccurate or unverifiable. Remember, if the creditor doesn't respond to the bureau at all, this is the same as the listing being unverifiable. In this case, the negative listing will now show up as a positive listing, or it will be deleted from your report all together. This is the best possible outcome.

If you are not getting the desired results from the credit bureaus Credit bureau disputes are not handled by computers, but by people, so the possibility that your claims was misunderstood, overlooked or mishandled is good. Fixing your credit takes time, and there is nothing you can do to expedite the process. However, you can always resubmit your claims.

Mike receives his responses from the credit bureaus within the time allowed by law and eagerly rips open the envelopes. He was pleased to see that half of the collections were removed from his credit report and the late payment on his credit card has been corrected. On 3 of the collection accounts on his Equifax report, the results of the investigations were listed as "verified". Trans Union deleted all of the collection account listings, but Experian only deleted one of them. The rest of the listing investigations were listed as "verified".

Tips for resubmitting your credit dispute

* Be persistent! Become more insistent, but not more threatening, with each dispute. As you submit one dispute after another, it may become increasingly difficult to get the checker to initiate an investigation.Your first one or two disputes should be friendly and polite. Just like any other consumer, you can become frustrated and threatening as time passes. You may threaten to hire an attorney, you may threaten to complain to the FTC and your state's attorney general, etc. But don’t overdo it.
* Be creative - Create and utilize other techniques that help further the idea that the dispute letter is from a truly wronged and disadvantaged consumer. The checker is only interested in investigating disputes that truly are erroneous and damaging. Again, because the agencies are flooded with requests, they tend to give priority to those that seem most urgent.
* Do not bombard the credit bureaus with disputes (about the same listings, that is) - Do not bombard the credit bureaus with disputes. Sending one dispute right after another is wasteful and counterproductive. You may wind up alienating the credit agency so that they hold up your progress. (Remember, they cannot legally stop you from restoring accurate information but the people who run the agencies, like anyone else, probably do not respond well to harassment.) Also remember, that credit repair is a time-consuming operation requiring great patience. The rule of thumb is to wait 60 days between disputes of the same listing.

After 3 total submissions to the bureaus disputing his credit, Mike succeeds in removing all of his collection accounts from his credit bureaus except for one on Experian. He recorded each transaction in his Palm Pilot, and the entire process took him 4 months. Each submission cost approximately $36 in mailing fees. He could have done the mailing cheaper by sending rregularregistered mail (about $10 instead of $36), but decided he wanted to save time by sending his disputes by Next Day Mail.

total costs: $132
Time it took to remove the negative listings: 4 months

What if a removed negative item comes back on my credit report?
Ok, you’ve removed a listing and are breathing a deep sigh of relief. Then you get a letter in the mail from a credit bureau telling you the item has been added back on. What happened?

Reverified listings
This is actually becoming more commonplace: since the new credit laws require that the bureaus investigate and resolve your disputes within 30 days, they will sometimes remove the negative information temporarily until they get the information verified as true. Then they will put back any information verified to be true and notify you of this.By law, they can do this, but they have to notify you in writing.

http://www.my-credit-guide.com

Credit Information : Free Credit Report

2006-02-15T07:25:00.000-08:00

Can I get a free copy of my own credit report?
Yes! There are many ways to get a free copy of your credit report.

As of Jan 1, 2004, due to the new FCRA Act of 2003, all credit bureaus will be required to give out one free credit report per year. They are rolling this program out slowly as the year rolls on. You can see when you are eligiable for a free report. Note: The Credit Bureaus are not required to give out your credit score for free. If you want to order your score in addition to your free report, most are charging about $5.95. The free reports are good for 30 days only, so make sure you print your reports if you get them online.

You can order your free annual credit report online at www.annualcreditreport.com, by calling 877-322-8228, or by completing the Annual Credit Report Request Form and mailing it to: Annual Credit Report Request Service, P.O. Box 105281, Atlanta, GA 30348-5281.

When you order, you need to provide your name, address, Social Security number, and date of birth. To verify your identity, you may need to provide some information that only you would know, like the amount of your monthly mortgage payment.

Beware! There are some websites out there who are posing as the free annual credit report site who are engaged in fraudulent activities.

Consumers in the Western states – Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming – can order their free reports beginning December 1, 2004.

Consumers in the Midwestern states – Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin – can order their free reports beginning March 1, 2005.

Consumers in the Southern states – Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas – can order their free reports beginning June 1, 2005.

Consumers in the Eastern states – Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and West Virginia – the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and all U.S. territories can order their free reports beginning September 1, 2005.

What if I've already gotten my free report for the year?
If you wish to order more than one report in a year's time, most bureaus will charge you $9.00 for the report and $12.95 if you want to see your score included.

There are exceptions to this one-per-consumer-per-year rule.

If you are turned down for credit, employment, or insurance within the last 60 days. Mail a copy of the written proof of your turn down to the credit bureaus, requesting your free report.
If you were charged higher rates and fees or deposits based on a credit report issued by a credit bureau, you have the right to get a free copy from that bureau
If you certify in writing that either you are unemployed and plan to seek employment in the next 60 days
If you are on welfare
If you write to say you were a victim of fraud
If you are too impatient to wait for this, you can always order your credit report online:
Get all three credit bureau's information in one merged report.

Help! What are all those codes on my credit report?
A separate key or explanation should be included with the report you receive. Sit down and spend some time with it. If you gave it an honest try and it still seems like Sanskrit, you might ask a trusted friend to go over it with you. Or someone in your personnel office at work, or the dean of students office at your school, or behind the railing at your bank, might be willing to help you. (It's not their job to do this, so remember that you're asking a favor. You may be charged a fee.)

What are "inquiries" on my credit report?
Whenever you or anyone else asks for a copy of your credit report, the request is supposed to be noted as part of your credit history. If you apply for lots of credit cards in a short time, this will produce a flurry of "inquiry" notes on your credit report. Lenders often turn this around and assume that a flurry of inquiries means you've recently applied for lots of credit, so they turn you down on that basis even though the inference is not strictly valid.

If a lender cites "excessive inquiries" as a reason for turning you down, this is what has happened. The lender has guidelines for how many inquiries in what period of time is too many. Unfortunately, you have no legal right to challenge this policy or even to know what the specific criteria may be.

Don't give your name or address to a merchant until you're actually ready to apply for credit there. Some merchants illegally run credit checks on you as soon as they have your name and address, even though you have not applied for credit, to give them an idea of what to sell you and how. (I'm told many car dealers do this.)

I don't know what legal recourse, if any, you have against unauthorized inquiries.

If lender A sees inquiries from B, C, and D but no new accounts, A may assume that B, C, and D turned you down for credit. Figuring "better safe than sorry," A may then turn you down just because it assumes B, C, and D turned you down. Again, this is a judgment call on the part of A, and you have no legal right to challenge it. If you have not applied for any credit recently but have been, say, looking at cars at several dealerships, you might want to let the lender know this in case it's taking unauthorized inquiries into account. See our information on how to remove inquiries from your credit report.

Can you provide any information on profit and loss charge offs? I would like to know how charge offs affect my credit report. Are they debts I need to deal with? And how do they look to companies that are checking my credit history.
Profit and loss charge offs are used most often by credit card companies. They write the debt off on their books as uncollectable rather than spending time and lawyer's fees to collect them. Charge offs are considered a serious black mark on your credit report. Only bankruptcy and foreclosure are worse.

However, even if these companies aren't actively trying to collect from you, these debts are still owed by you to the company. If you refinance your house or apply for a loan, most mortgage companies will make you pay off these debts. The reason is that these debts can be turned into a lien against your property.

Liens matter to a mortgage company for a couple of reasons:

When you sell your home, the monies owed against a lien (plus interest) must be paid off to clear your title.
Liens are in a higher position than a mortgage, meaning they get paid off before the mortgage company gets its money. If the mortgage company has to foreclose and you have lots of liens on your home plus a mortgage, the mortgage company potentially could lose thousands of dollars.
Just because these debts are charged off doesn't mean that the creditor won't come after you later. Creditors have the right to sue you and win a judgment in court until the statute of limitations runs out.

If you're never going to buy a home, or at least not for 7 more years (that's when the profit and losses will drop off your credit report), having charge offs on your credit history may not be quite as serious. If you buy a car, or anything other than real estate, you won't be asked to pay these debts off. But your credit will really stink for a long time...good luck getting a low interest rate car loan! Again, charge offs are almost as bad as having a bankruptcy on your credit history, plus you still owe the money.

If you need to get charge offs removed from your credit report, you can:

Pay them off.
Declare bankruptcy.

Bankruptcy may not be a bad option if the debts are out of hand. If you keep your credit clean and open three new charge accounts (even gas cards), you can get an A paper (the best rates and terms) loan in 2 years. See our bankruptcy FAQ sheet for more information.

Who makes sure that agencies and creditors follow the laws?
The Federal Trade Commission, (FTC #202-326-2222) is responsible for enforcing federal credit laws.

http://www.my-credit-guide.com