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The payday loan money blog continues Part III on personal credit with obtaining and reviewing your personal credit report. Here’s how.

A quick Internet search will reveal several sites you can use to order your credit report, but if you want the one that I use, it’s www.freeannualcreditreport.com. This site is a reputable source and will allow you to print off all three of your credit reports from each of the three main credit bureaus.

You will be asked some personal questions in regard to previous street addresses or credit accounts that will help them identify you as the person you say you are. Once you get through these preliminaries, you will be able to print off your report for review.

Understanding Your Credit Report

After printing off your credit report, the next objective is to carefully review it for any discrepancies. By discrepancies I mean anything that appears to be incorrect.

You may have misspelling in your name and address or you may have credit accounts listed that don’t belong to you. This could be a result of identity fraud or perhaps just a recording mistake made by someone else’s creditor or the credit bureau themselves.

Reading your credit report can be confusing at first, but after a short examination you ought to be able to make sense of it. Your credit report will be divided in to several sections. Here is some helpful information describing each section you will find on your report.

Section 1: Personal Information

The section on personal information is the easiest part of your credit report to read and contains information such as SSN, Name, Address, etc. Double check the information here for accuracy before moving on.

Section 2: Credit History

The credit history section contains the bulk of the information on your credit report. It lists all the information for your past credit accounts including the date they were opened, closed, account numbers, names of your creditors and if you still owe a creditor, the minimum payments, the total balance left on the account and the current status of the account whether delinquent or in good standing.

If you possess accounts that are not showing on your credit report, it may be because they are relatively new or the account resides with a company that doesn’t run credit checks when applying for their service. This would include companies like payday loans lenders. Some payday loans lenders don’t require credit checks at all, making them a prime source of extra cash for individuals with a bad credit score.

This information is pretty straightforward, but there may be some things you question, so I will list them below for your understanding.

• Internal Collection: The creditor is in the process of trying to collect the debt.
• Charged Off: The creditor tried to collect the debt, couldn’t and threw
  in the towel.
• Numbers prefaced by R or I: You will see a lot of the numbers on your accounts prefaced with the letters R or I. “R” stands for revolving credit accounts where “I” stands for Installment loan accounts. The lower the number that follows, usually between one and nine, the better the payment history on that account.

Section 3. Public Records

If you have anything in the public records section, you have a long road of credit repair ahead of you. This is the section where things like defaults and or bankruptcies are reported and is a big red flag to anyone thinking about extending a line of credit to you.

You will have to be diligent and patient as these things can take a long time to cycle of your credit report. For example, a bankruptcy can take as long as 10 years to cycle off.

Keep in mind, however, that these public records are easier to deal with as they get older, provided you maintain a clean credit history between then and now. Your credit score, however, won’t come to its full potential no matter what you do until they clear off your report altogether.

Section 4. Inquiries

An inquiry is marked on your credit report whenever the creditor you’re applying for financing through checks your personal credit. These inquiries could also be insurance providers as well as employers you applied with and gave consent to run your credit.

The more credit inquiries on your account, the more risky you appear to creditors as they might tend to think you will overextend yourself with two many open accounts and therefore not be able to pay them on time.

The number of inquiries typically doesn’t affect your credit score too much, but as a general rule of thumb you will want to be conscious of how often you are opening or applying for accounts or services that require a credit check.

In Conclusion

Take the time to download and review your credit report and join us again for Part IV of this series on the payday loans money blog.

I hope your report fares well!

This article is a continuation of “Witty Living Part I | A Report From Your Payday Loans Source,” covering money saving tips to brave the current economic storm.

Saving On Interest

If you currently have debts such as high interest credit cards or perhaps an auto loan, you may consider making a large lump sum payment with the funds you may have set aside in savings.  Why?

Bank savings accounts usually pay very little in interest, failing sometimes to simply keep up with today’s inflation rates. By using these funds to pay off your high interest debts or make a significant payment towards them, you will save more money in the long run in interest fees then in the interest you would have earned on it if it were in a bank savings account.

Also, making payments above and beyond the minimum required payments on your credit accounts, will save you lots of extra money in interest fees over the life of the balance as well.

Reconsidering Your Mortgage Payment

Perhaps one of the most significant ways to save yourself money is by changing your current mortgage structure from a 30 year fixed mortgage to a 15 year fixed mortgage.

If you were to take a $100,000 fixed rate loan with an annual percentage rate of 7%, it would cost you $75,000 less than a 30 year fixed rate loan at the the same percentage rate.

Many think that a 15 year mortgage means your payment will be double the size that it is now however, payments on a 15 year versus a 30 year usually only differ by a few hundred dollars.

Before you decide to switch to a 15 year mortgage, take a careful accounting of your finances as you don’t want to find yourself borrowing payday loans each month just to make your monthly housing payment.

Water Down Your Heating Bill

Believe it or not, heating your water accounts for approximately 14% of your monthly utility bill. Being diligent about cutting costs here will show you a noticeable difference on your next bill. Here are a few ways to cut costs on your hot water bill.

• If your water heater is old, you can invest in a newer more efficient water heater for only a few hundred dollars and by doing so you should see some significant savings each month.
• I you cannot afford a newer unit, you can wrap your current water heater with insulation or a water heater blanket to make it more energy efficient.
• Encouraging shorter shower times among your family members will dramatically decrease the amount of energy it takes to heat your water and keep it heated.
• Check the temperature of your hot water.  If it is scalding hot, you should turn your water heater thermostat down so as to avoid heating water above the satisfactory temperature for bathing, doing dishes, etc.
• Changing your existing shower head to a lower flow aerating shower head can save you up to half the water consumption that is currently being used for bathing.
• When washing clothes, 80% to 85% of the energy used is for heating the water. Try using cooler water with your loads of laundry. You shouldn’t have to use hot water except for heavily soiled or stained clothes. For everything else, you can use warm and cold water.

Subsidize Monthly Entertainment With Public Resources

Families are faced with large costs these days with the cost of entertainment. Taking the kids to “Chuck E Cheese” or to a movie at the local cinema can cost an arm and a leg these days.

Subsidizing your entertainment costs by utilizing your public library for book and movie rentals can prove to be a cost effective and fun outing for the family.

Looking at a local community newsletter or website may also provide you with some additional community funded activities that are community funded.

Posted courtesy of PersonalMoneyStore.com, your payday loans source!