We will clean your credit up, no matter how bad it is. Bankruptcies, bad loans, judgments and liens – we can remove it all.

You’ve probably heard lines similar to this before. Maybe you heard it on the radio, maybe you saw a commercial on television, or maybe you saw an ad online or in the newspaper. Either way you were likely listening to half-truths or possibly even full-fledged lies. The truth is that these so-called credit repairing companies probably won’t repair your credit much (if any) and will likely charge hundreds to thousands of dollars for just about nothing.

Here’s the truth about credit repair. It’s not easy and it takes time and discipline. If you want your credit repaired then you should consider yourself the responsible party – after all, you were the one who messed it up in the first place, so why shouldn’t you be the one who has to work on fixing it? Let me tell you how.

Get Yourself A Copy of Your Credit Report

Go to annualcreditreport.com and get yourself a copy of your credit report from one of the three credit reporting agencies (or all of them if you want) for free. In the increasingly electronic age that we’re living in I’d recommend checking your credit report as often as possible so you can avoid disasters such as identity theft and incorrect reporting. If you stagger the reports you get from annualcreditreport.com then you can check your report every four months.

Make Sure You Know What’s On Your Credit Report

You didn’t think that you were done after getting a copy of your credit report did you? Now that you’ve gotten yourself a copy of your credit report it’s time to study it. What’s on it? Make sure that everything listed is something that you recognize. For example if there is a home loan on your credit report but you don’t own a home (and never have for that matter) then there’s something seriously wrong. So be sure to comb through your report and make sure nothing looks out of the ordinary.

Get Your Spending Under Control and Pay Down Your Debt

You will likely never improve your credit score unless you can manage to get your spending habits under control and start to pay down your debt – especially credit card debt. Once you start to pay down any high debt levels you might have you will start to see your credit score increase.

A two-fold parting question for you: how is your credit and have you had any experience with credit repair agencies? I’d love some feedback on the matter.

Yesterday in the post Identity Theft is No Laughing Matter I shared some basic information with you about identity theft. Today I’d like to take this one step further and educate you on some specific scams used to obtain your personal information. My hope is that by educating you on these scams you’ll be less likely to become a victim.

The Jury Duty Scam

You’re sitting at home enjoying your Thanksgiving dinner when the phone rings. You answer it and the person on the other end of the line is claiming to be a court worker and is telling you that you failed to report for jury duty and a warrant has been issued for your arrest. Naturally you’re skeptical and you tell the person on the other line that you never received a jury duty notification. The scammer then asks for confidential information in order to verify that you are who you say you are (how ironic is this?). This information usually includes your social security number, your birthdate and can often include credit card numbers as well, which is exactly what a criminal needs in order to commit identity theft.

Phishing

According to the dictionary, Phishing is “the activity of defrauding an online account holder of financial information by posing as a legitimate company.” Phishing is widely used to try to gain account information for banks and other financial institutions. I personally get phishing e-mails from banks that I’ve never even held an account at. A great rule of thumb to avoid being phished is that a legitimate company will NEVER ask you to verify your account information through an e-mail (and likewise over the phone).

If It Sounds Too Good To Be True… It Is

There’s a simple rule to remember when it comes to protecting your identity and, by extension, your financial well-being. If it sounds too good to be true then it definitely is. No legitimate company will send you an e-mail asking for you to verify your identity. No entrepreneur in Nigeria wants to send you money.

Let’s wrap this up with a few links to some documented scams: e-mail scammers, Gmail phishing attempt, PayPal phishing guide.

This post was written in response to the Spend on Life Credit Blogging Scholarship. If you’re a student with a blog and would like the chance to win a $2,000 dollar scholarship check out the Spend on Life Blogging Scholarship!

While watching The Office the other day I saw an episode where Jim, the office prankster, comes in dressed like Dwight, an annoying paper salesman. At first Dwight doesn’t realize that Jim is making fun of him, but after Jim starts to argue with Dwight about bears (Dwight’s favorite animal), he becomes enraged and shouts, “Identity theft is not a joke, Jim!”

While I hate to admit that Dwight may be right about something, he brings up an important point. Identity theft is not a joke – in fact it is a very serious problem that can have significant ramifications for those who have had their identities stolen.

What is identity theft?

Identity theft can be defined as a type of fraud where the criminal pretends to be someone other than himself with the intent of personal gain. One of the most common types of identity theft is financial identity theft, which is the act of using another’s identity to obtain goods and services.

A classic example of financial identity theft is bank fraud, where the criminal uses a fraudulently obtained social security number, address and other forms of identification to apply for a loan under the victim’s name. Once the criminal has received the proceeds from the loan he disappears, leaving behind a fraudulent loan on his victim’s credit and a serious headache.

Preventing identity theft

The easiest way to prevent identity theft is to never share your personal information with anyone that you don’t trust. While there have been many cases where personal information has been sold by a corporation’s disgruntled employee, most often criminals come into contact with sensitive materials through other means, such as:

• Stealing mail
• Retrieving information from old discarded computers
• Pickpocketing
• Hacking
• Digging through rubbish bins

Identity theft is a growing problem in today’s increasingly electronic world. It’s important that you learn how to protect your identity so you don’t end up paying thousands of dollars out of your own pocket trying to restore your (once good) name. Now that you know a little bit more about identity theft it’s time to take a look at a few common identity theft scams.

This post was written in response to the Spend on Life Credit Blogging Scholarship. If you’re a student with a blog and would like the chance to win a $2,000 dollar scholarship check out the Spend on Life Blogging Scholarship!