May 28th, 2006

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Know Your Credit Score

A sad but true fact of life is that more and more things depend on what your credit score is. From the loan rate you get to whether you get a job or not can depend on this number. Experian, TransUnion and Equifax are the three credit reporting agencies. By law you are now allowed to access your credit report(they charge for you to access your score) from Equifax, TransUnion and Experian. You can go to www.annualcreditreport.com during a calendar year and get each of the reports. So because you can get all three, stagger months between accessing each and get a different company’s report each of the three times.

Once you get the report you need to examine it carefully to confirm there are no mistakes on it (mistakes are not unusual). Then you will have to pay to access your score. The scoring system has changed recently, but not all are accepting those changes. Click here to get an idea of what your score means.

Written by mike on May 28th, 2006 with 1 comment.
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Automate Your Financial Life

Call up all the businesses you have monthly bills and have them directly taken from your bank account. It will give you peace of mind and you will never be late on a payment again. Also, call up your mutual fund and have them draw directly from your banl account as well. This way you are dollar-cost averaging as well as never seeing or missing this money then. This keeps your financial life disciplined and less work for you in the long run.

Written by mike on May 28th, 2006 with no comments.
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Budgeting

Some words to the wise about where your money goes:

NEEDS should take up about 50% of your budget

WANTS can take up 30% of your budget

20% should go to SAVINGS

Written by mike on May 28th, 2006 with 1 comment.
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