Not all Americans have heard of credit monitoring services. If you are among these people, then this article is for you.
Credit monitoring services are offered mostly by reporting agencies. This particular service is pretty straightforward. For a certain amount of fee, these credit monitoring agencies will monitor your credit and make sure that nothing questionable or fraudulent will make your credit score decrease. There is a lot of question on this particular service though as a lot of critics say that credit monitoring services are simply not worth the investment. Can they be true?
Let me discuss with you a couple of points on how credit monitoring can benefit you:
Contrary to what other people say, credit monitoring agencies can actually do something to prevent certain types of identity theft or credit fraud. Any consumer who uses credit should monitor his or her credit report although in reality, not everyone does it. Why is it important? Because at any time, a negative rating can be placed on your credit report, either mistakenly or deliberately (after fraud has taken place), and that can have significant consequences for your credit score. Remember that your social security number isn’t the only information that you should be very careful about. You should also consider important your personal details. It would all depend on the thief on where he or she will use your information to commit fraud.
It is therefore important that you know what goes in and out of your credit report and how it got there. The longer you took to have the fraudulent entry disputed, the harder it would be to dispute. If you’re pretty busy to do it yourself, then that’s where credit monitoring services kicks in.
One downside perhaps of this credit monitoring services is their price. Monitoring services can get pretty expensive and can cost you around $150 dollars a year. Come to think of it, this amount can be used to reduce your credit card debt. If you know a lot about the internet or if you’re pretty comfortable surfing on your own, you can actually monitor your credit score with only a couple of mouse clicks since the three credit facilities which are all responsible in issuing credit reports can also be found online.
The Federal government in the United States now provides free credit reports to every consumer once every year. That means that you don’t have to pay any amount of fee if you want to check on your credit score for the year. Of course, if you really want to secure your credit, you need more than copy a year and while what the government provides is not enough, it’s a good way to start your credit monitoring scheme. It is pretty ideal to check on your credit score at least four times a year (once every three months). You need to do this to ensure that before you file for your new car, your credit is good and you’ll have no problems to deal with as you cruise.
