Your credit score has enormous power over your life and your financial affairs – so it is vital that you aren’t paying for mistakes that aren’t yours.
According to the Federal Reserve, up to 79 percent of credit reports contain errors, and 25 percent of them contain errors so serious that they result in credit being denied.
This is especially crucial these days when loan standards have tightened and if your credit score is less than perfect, you may not qualify for a mortgage, car loan, or student loan.
A low credit score also means much higher percentage rates on your credit cards, your mortgage loans, your credit cards, and any other loan that you are approved. You could easily end up paying thousands of dollars a year more than necessary simply because of errors on someone else’s credit score.
It is vital that you regularly review copies of your credit report to make sure that it is accurate. If there are errors, you need to send a letter to the credit reporting agency disputing it, and to the company that provided the inaccurate report.
You must keep pursuing the credit agency and the company which gave the false information, sending them letters and keeping copies of all correspondence to and from them, until the errors are removed from your report.
If you don’t, you are giving away money that you could be saving or using to pay off bills.