The best investment you can make in your future is to take full control of your credit scores. There are three major bureaus that keep track of your credit and you can have a free copy of each of them once a year. In addition, there are services available that will monitor you account for a monthly fee. They will check with you on purchases if they believe there is some out of character spending going on. These are great things to do but first you should make sure you have full control of your credit report. Here are a couple ways to take those free credit reports and to make something good happen for your long term financial health,
1.) Pay down bad debt- So what is bad debt you ask? Pay debt occurs when you get a credit card or take out a loan with high interest payments. If you are making minimum payments on these cards then you are caught in the vicious cycle that keeps Americans from making strides in their personal finances. The first move here is to make a list of your highest interest card and pay them down. If you have charge cards with companies like Old Navy and Target, the chances are good that the interest rates on these cards is somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 percent. Such an interest rate may have been fine when you were a teenager but as an adult, there is simply no reason to have high rate cards live these around.
2.) Pay down your high balance cards but don’t destroy them. For some reason, you are likely to incur penalties against your credit rating for outriht closing these cards. What you will want to do is pay down the balance, preferably in large chunks, but keep the card open. This with improve your debt to available credit ratio and help to improve your credit score over the long run.
Take control of your financial future today and stop making corporate America rich with your purchasing power.