Managing Your Credit

Every person in the United States needs to manage their credit, debt and home equity more strategically in order to optimize both their current credit and future financial situation.

Over 70% of consumers identify errors on their credit report. Twenty-five percent of those are serious enough to deny consumers and business owners access to credit, preferred interest rates or even a job. With over 54 billion credit updates occurring each year, it’s very likely you may have errors that are negatively impacting the ability to get credit and/or causing you to pay unnecessary interest expenses.

Identifying a credit report error is only the first step. Most consumers don’t know they have an error on their report because they rarely, if ever, review it until they need to get a loan. By the time this occurs, a consumer typically has less than 45 days before they need their loan funded, and their ability to get a single, valid error corrected within this time frame is marginal at best.

The need to proactively understand, evaluate and optimize your credit profile has never been greater. So what should a consumer do? Become educated and informed about how credit works. You should continually review and evaluate your credit profile. When a questionable activity is identified, make sure to understand it and correct any valid errors. In most cases, consumers begin by filing a dispute with the applicable credit agency who is reporting the information.

Credit monitoring is designed to inform you of all new activity on your credit report, but that´s only the tip of the iceberg in the world of credit management. Several reporting agencies have designed programs to help you understand and more effectively manage your entire credit profile. By improving your understanding of your credit profile and how credit scoring works, you are better able to correct errors before they become issues. This allows you to proactively manage your credit, and ultimately improve your credit score. As a result, you will simplify the process of getting future credit, improve the types of credit and interest rates that will become available (home, car, credit cards, boats, etc.), reduce the overall unnecessary interest expenses you pay, and most importantly, reduce your overall financial stress associated with credit and debt.

As a result of the current economy, you cannot afford to be uneducated, unprepared or unprotected as it relates to your credit.  Consumers with better credit save hundreds and thousands of dollars over their lifetime.  For more information, contact The Bremner Group, 310-571-1364.

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