How does that song go? We are the champions, we are the champions, no time for losing, because we are the champions….
Seriously, I feel as though this is one of the greatest accomplishments of my life. I tackled an incredibly confusing system, a system that makes me feel completely powerless, and I won!
How did I do it?
- I went to www.annualcreditreport.com, the site set up by the three big credit rating agencies to provide a free yearly credit report to consumers.
- The first time I did it, about a year and a half ago, it was a huge pain — for some security reason, they wouldn’t give me my credit report online, and I had to mail in documentation and get my report by mail. But after I did that once, it was easy to access my report online.
- I found about eight errors. I reported the errors on the website, and TransUnion fixed them. It was surprisingly easy; I thought I was going to have to fight to get the errors fixed.
- I checked my credit score (that’s not free, but it costs less than $10), and found that it was dismal. I don’t remember the exact number, but it was somewhere in the 500s or 600s — in the 35th percentile. How pathetic is that?
- I learned, by looking at my credit report, that I had an unpaid $150 electric bill from two years earlier, thanks to a deadbeat roommate who failed to pay a bill once I moved out. I paid the bill. There was also a $40 late payment to Victoria’s Secret, because I had just forgotten to pay a bill.
- I called Con Ed and Victoria’s Secret and asked them, very nicely, to take the missed payments off my credit report. They agreed.
- I checked my credit report again today. I now have a credit score of 845, which TransUnion rates a “B.”
HOORAY FOR ME! I should get a gold medal in the personal finance Olympics.
4 Comments
August 15, 2008 at 9:24 pm
I was inspired by this post to check my own score. I was bummed to fine that I have a grade C, and there isn’t much I can do. There are no inaccuracies, just one loan with a late payment from 6 years ago, and I’ve had my accounts for over 10 years, but they say there’s not enough history. Seems like the only way to bump it up is to get a home loan…
this is a weird system. who scores things from 501-990 anyway??
August 15, 2008 at 10:55 pm
Well you can call your bank where you had the late payment, and ask them to remove it. If there’s only one payment, I bet they’ll do it. Both of the places where I had missed payments agreed to take it off my report.
September 13, 2008 at 8:56 pm
[...] which I boost my credit score by 200 [...]
December 1, 2008 at 12:34 pm
[...] Guy Money has a good post on credit scores. (Also, read about how I improved my credit score by 200 [...]