03-20-08
Planning and Managing Your Modern Day Finances
Planning your future is more intricate these days. The modern world has to include knowledge of financial tools that prior generations did not use, like the FICO score. Now more than ever, you need to understand how lenders evaluate you as a bad or good credit risk. This can help you obtain loans in the future for important milestones in your life like education or a home. If you decide that this type of information is only for financial professionals, this attitude can cost you hundreds, if not thousands, in extra costs on your loans or even keep you from obtaining employment sometimes.
The Credit Bureaus:
There are three credit bureaus that keep track of your credit score: TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian. You should check out the information in each of these credit reports annually and dispute any wrong information. Endeavor to pay your bills on time and this also helps to substantially build up your credit score. If you’ve suffered a bankruptcy, the impact of it on your credit reports can still be mitigated. You can establish more positive recent credit history with loans that don’t require a good credit history but report payment to a credit bureau, like a payday loan.
Are Your Loans Becoming Unmanageable?
Rather than avoiding unpleasant news, if your loans are becoming harder to pay you should seek some arrangement with your lender. By being proactive, you can manage your bills and keep bad news from showing up on your credit reports. An example of one way that you can negotiate with a lender is to change the due date on a bill. Many lenders, especially credit card lenders, don’t mind if you change it once to a date that is more suitable for your budgeting purposes.
Other types of loans have very flexible payment terms, like student loans. You have a grace period of many months and can even go into forbearance, if you can prove a hardship. However, you cannot get your payments or terms modified unless you contact the lender, so it’s in your best interest to do so before the information lands on your credit report.
20 May
