Geek Chic – Smart Design for the Style Conscious

This is simple. If you want to live credit free you basically have to walk around with a gigantic bag of cash 24/7 no ifs ands or butts.
But if you want to lease a car, house, phone or buy a plane ticket. You’re gonna need a credit card. And you’re gonna need a credit score. And a good one.
But what is your credit score? Well it’s a number in the range of 0 – 800 that tells the creditors what kind of a “risk you are. A score of 700 – 800 is considered “low risk. A score of 0 – 500 is all in the “high risk” area and you can pretty much kiss any chance of purchasing using credit goodbye.

But how do you find out what your credit score is?
There are three major services that collect and provide this information based on your total financial profile. Generally mapped through your Social Security Number. They are Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax.
But to retrieve your score from any of their websites costs money. So what do you do if you want it for free?

Go to freecreditreport.com. You know the commercial. The long haired loser friends singing stories of how their credit got screwed up so they went to freecreditreport.com to find out what their score was?

So I signed up today, and within 10 minutes had a beautifully layed out presentation of all my credit history, accounts, lease holdings and investments. Pretty scary but there I was, ink on paper.

Yes you have to give them your credit card, but here’s the trick. You call them immediately (within 7-9 days) and tell the CS Rep you want to cancel your membership. Yes you want to cancel. No you don’t want the extra service or discounted rate, you just want to cancel. They put you on hold for 2 minutes and then come back with those lovely words, “you are all set Mr. Schweinhowzer. Your membership has been cancelled. You are free to go.”

Nice.