It’s time to get down to the nitty gritty of repairing our credit. We are going to start by actually fixing errors on the credit report.
You might think that this is a silly step because how many errors are there really actually on a report? Well, several million! According to the Federal Trade Commission – 42 million Americans have errors on their credit reports. This is a HUGE chunk of the adult population. Errors on credit reports can cause a lot of financial and job problems. Again, there are several reasons why you want a good, clean credit report and score…even for the debt free.
The Nitty Gritty of this week’s task:
Last week’s task involved getting your free credit report and score that you are entitled to each year without counting as a “check” (a soft or hard check) on your credit!
Well, it’s now time to comb through the report and make a list of any and all errors, discrepancies or inaccuracies on your credit report.
We are giving you this week to first identify and find any errors. We want you to take the time to investigate and research the information as some of the errors might not stand out to you right away. You will want to check the report against your own records to truly see if the items on your credit report are indeed accurate.
Make sure to watch for other discrepancies such as incorrect balances, reported late payments if you have proof of paying on time, unauthorized credit checks, multiple checks from the same account, etc.
We have found our fair share of errors on our reports in the past and a simple dispute solved many and cleaned up the report and score a little more each time. We will get into disputing later, but for now, this week’s task is to just identify the errors.
We have provided a free printable checklist for you to utilize to help you work through this task efficiently and easily, while giving you a resource to place in your home binder to reference in months ahead on the status of those disputes. Yes, it does take months to remove those inaccuracies, but a few months time is better than a credit report in error years from now.
It’s pretty self-explanatory, but this week you are only going to fill out the “Creditor” and “Dispute Details” boxes as you go through your report. We will be using the other boxes later on.
We also wanted to let you know that “creditor” is not just those that you owe money to in the form of a loan. It could even be the phone company that made an unauthorized credit check (or other error) as errors are not always just debt related. Even since becoming consumer debt-free, we’ve found a few errors from non-creditors that didn’t obtain our authorization for a credit check prior to opening a new account. However, for simplification on the form, we just used the word creditor to cover all. 🙂
So go ahead and work on this week’s task as we begin to gain more control over our credit/financial character history!
Just print your free printable credit report cleanup checklist below:
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<== Download your printable credit report cleanup checklist HERE. |
Again, we just wanted to remind you that it is important to have a good credit score and report, even for those families that are debt-free!
Need to catch up? Come join us on this challenge from the very beginning by clicking on the 52-Week Take Back Your Finances Challenge and sign up to start receiving your automated challenge from the very beginning!
One final thing…we also have a Facebook Group where you can engage in discussions, receive encouragement and talk to others that are participating in the challenges too for more ideas! Head to the Be Intentional with The Thrifty Couple Facebook Page HERE and ask to join us there! You can also invite friends and spouses too!
Disclaimer: We are not licensed financial planners. We are only a couple that have been just a hair-breadth away from bankruptcy and found our way out of debt with a goal to now help others. Please make sure to consider any advice given on our site and in this challenge as tips we have used ourselves; they may not work for everyone. If you have questions please make sure tocontact a licensed professional.
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