Healthy habits for a healthy credit

By Justin Hunter

Having and maintaining clean credit is one of the most important underlining factors that will allow you to be successful throughout your life. You will be able to purchase a bigger and better house, a faster or more efficient vehicle and send your child to a smaller and more sophisticated college the better your credit.

Unfortunately, the Internet and television is consistently highlighting credit fraud and ways your credit will be lowered. It seems that if you chew your gum wrong, you are likely to see your credit decline.

Realty Times columnist, Phoebe Chongchua, offers the best ways to keep your credit as high and clean as possible, in her October 23, 2006 article, “Keeping Your Credit Clean.”

The most asked question when it comes to maintaining a high standard of credit is if your score goes down every time an inquiry is made for a home loan.

The answer: as long as the inquiries are made in a short enough time span so that they can be grouped together, your credit should not be significantly affected.

“When a credit check is made by a potential lender it is called a hard inquiry. When a hard inquiry occurs it does have an impact on your credit score. However, when you're shopping for a mortgage or a car loan, credit bureaus typically cluster the hard inquiries together because the credit reporting bureaus understand that the consumer is shopping for the best loan.”

According to Steven Katz a spokesperson for TransUnion's TrueCredit.com, there are few things to keep in mind that are in your control that will better ensure a good or healthy credit.

“One card you should not carry: Leave your Social Security card at home. ‘There is basically no reason that you need to [carry] that with you,’ says Katz.”

Katz further explains that if you do not have your social security number memorized by now (you probably should), you should only carry it on you when you know you will absolutely need it for say, applying for a loan. If your social security number falls into the wrong hands, your financial livelihood could be in danger.

“If at all possible, people should have a locking mailbox,” Katz said.

Katz said that locking mailboxes are becoming more available at local hardware stores. A locking mailbox may be the key to saving you months of stress and financial agony.
Next, you should shred your documents.

“Katz says if you don't shred your personal documents and criminals access the information, the result can be devastating to your credit. Criminals will often attempt to open new accounts using your name and information. If they're successful, they will use the new account and divert the account information to the criminals' address or post office box.”

In this case, your predator will be receiving your bills and just throw them out, which will do extensive damage to your credit.

Other than the obvious security factor is to always make sure your credit cards do not leave your person, one common thing that often leads to unhealthy credit results from the lack of knowing what is on your credit report.

Every consumer can access their credit report free once per year from a number of agencies. This is extremely important because there may be inaccuracies or black marks on you report that you did not know about that is lowering your score. The quicker to attempt to remedy the falsities, the quicker you can reestablish your credit.

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