Begin to invest in your future part II
Tuesday, July 31, 2007 at 05:31PM 
Villa Limbo, Tobago WI
“…Ye are gods, but ye shall die like men…Arise o’gods…”
Psalms 82-6
You can purchase a home. Buying a home adds to your own personal investing, renting, you invest in someone else's future.
There is nothing that you cannot do. But you must begin to first believe and know in your mind, who you are. As one beautiful poet says “Who do you think you are not?” There is a divide growing in the United States much like many of the countries around the world. A gulf between the haves and have-nots, one of the partians between the haves and the have nots are those that are homeowners and those that are not. As I stated before in the post Begin Investing in Your future, I advised that you send for your credit report. The credit system has become a tool much like having money in the bank. Your credit history will determine how much you will pay when you borrow money. Your credit history is determining whether you will get a job, whether you will get auto insurance and the amount you will pay on it. Your credit history is determining your present and your future all in one swoop. Its important to know what’s on your credit history and gain understanding about what’s on your report.
Once you receive your credit report, one of the first things you will notice is your current address and social security number. Make sure this information is correct. If its not correct you can make the correction either on the internet, as you will receive a confirmation number on your credit report that allows you 30 days to access your report online or by filling out the “dispute” section of your report and send it back via the mail. The process of correcting an error is called “disputing” the item. You will follow the instructions on your credit report to dispute the incorrect information. You also have the option of simply writing a letter to the credit agency holding the incorrect information, this may require sending a copy of your social security card and a copy of your state or federally issued ID. In turn the credit agencies will conduct an investigation to determine if the information contained on your credit report is valid or not. The credit reporting must make this determination within 30 days and respond back to you.
As you continue reading your credit file you will reach an area that contains your payment history. This area contains the date the credit was opened, the highest balance, late and on time payments, whether or not the account is open or closed, the date of last activity and the balance due at the time of reporting. Understand, not all companies report to the credit reporting agencies at the same time. The time period can range from 30-45 days and some as long as 90 days depending on the company’s policy. Your credit report can contain bogus information about your payment history, possibly credit files that are not your accounts or accounts that are still showing a balance owed when you have paid it off or a file that is not yours at all. Again, you would use the disputing process to have this information updated or removed from your credit history.
All to often consumers make some common errors based on bad information. One of the common misconceptions is a negative file will be deleted simply by disputing the item with the credit reporting agency. This is untrue. The credit reporting agency will launch an investigation with the original credit company reporting the information to ascertain whether you actually submitted an application or if in fact you did not. Within 30 days by law, the credit reporting agency will submit its findings to you. If in fact it is not your credit file it will be deleted from your report, if it is your file you will be notified of the findings and it will remain on your report. If there is a delinquent file on your report you should seek to make arrangements to pay the balance off. Often, companies are willing to take a reduced amount in order to have the balance paid off. The next misconception is the belief that delinquent accounts will be removed after seven years. In fact they are removed seven years from the time they went delinquent. For instance, if you opened an account in 2000, however your account became delinquent in 2006. This negative information will remain on your credit report until 2013, which represents seven years from the time it went delinquent.
Another common mistake is closing or deleting closed accounts from your credit report. When you have information on your credit report and you know you have paid the account off and have always made on time payment, yet you no longer have the credit account or the credit card DO NOT close or delete these accounts. Should you close these accounts or have the closed accounts that show a good history deleted you will lower your credit score, you also want to be careful about deleting poor credit history that is paid off. Paid off accounts that may have had a slow or poor payment history can aide in keeping your credit score in the higher digits. Do Not close credit accounts that are open but you may not use anymore, this shows a good credit history and keeps your score high. Lastly, if you have a good credit history with a company and they see fit to increase your credit line, do not ask the company to reduce your credit limit. This shows you are worthy of more credit and will also increase your credit score, just be strong enough to not us the available credit to the limit. Your FICO score is what you want to increase and there are ways to make this happen. Look out for coming changes in the credit scoring process.
To be continued
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