Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You
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Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You
1–10 of 292 posts
Re: Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You
#2Another good way to protect yourself is to save money, and avoid needing to rely on banks for a credit lifeline.
Re: Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You
#3Another good way to protect yourself is to save money, and avoid needing to rely on banks for a credit lifeline.
But in many cases using credit will save you money. Two examples would be credit cards with their rewards (as long as you never pay interest) and house/car loans if you manage to get a low rate and invest what you don't pay up front.
Re: Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You
#4Another good way to protect yourself is to save money, and avoid needing to rely on banks for a credit lifeline.
Yes, however many industries in the US are attempting to "financialize" everything.
Debt-lenders no longer can sustain growth on just houses and cars- "let's go after furniture, all consumer goods, technology, payday loans"... etc.
It is a good solution for many to "just have money on hand", but when asset prices are inflated due to easy credit, how can I ever have enough to buy in cash?
Re: Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You
#5Another good way to protect yourself is to save money, and avoid needing to rely on banks for a credit lifeline.
You might not care about your credit rating but your credit rating, unfortunately, cares about you.
Do you want to rent an apartment in the United States? You will, in many geographical markets, expect to have credit pulled as a matter of course. This is partly to determine ability to pay and partly to determine whether you are socially established; "I have mountains of money, why would I need credit?" is something which is often said by people who operate meth labs.
Do you want to work in a job which requires a background investigation? Expect a credit pull.
Do you want certain varieties of insurance policies?
Expect this list to get longer as time goes on, because "credit" encodes a lot of things which are stupefyingly useful in predicting outcomes in advance. Like any bit of code which is stupefyingly useful, get_fico_score() is going to find its way in all sorts of places you'd never naively expect to see it.
Additionally, if someone comes to the mistaken conclusion that you owe them money, the harassment which likely accompanies that is a nuisance even if the dings to your credit score are not.
Re: Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You
#6Another good way to protect yourself is to save money, and avoid needing to rely on banks for a credit lifeline.
But in many cases using credit will save you money. Two examples would be credit cards with their rewards (as long as you never pay interest) and house/car loans if you manage to get a low rate and invest what you don't pay up front.
The "save money by spending money!!" argument is nonsense. People have just been brainwashed into conspicuous consumption to prop up the economic metrics.
Re: Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You
#7Another good way to protect yourself is to save money, and avoid needing to rely on banks for a credit lifeline.
But in many cases using credit will save you money. Two examples would be credit cards with their rewards (as long as you never pay interest) and house/car loans if you manage to get a low rate and invest what you don't pay up front.
This is a paradox I recently encountered - using credit cards can create another asset in the form of airline miles. A friend who is currently a college student (and just left a summer job as a postal carrier) used airline miles to pay for a weekend in a very nice hotel. At full rate, his few days would have cost more than a month of rent at my luxury apartment. He earned these miles through his ~20 airline-mile credit cards, and so now I'm researching how to game this "free to play" system.
Re: Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
But in many cases using credit will save you money. Two examples would be credit cards with their rewards (as long as you never pay interest) and house/car loans if you manage to get a low rate and invest what you don't pay up front.
The "save money by spending money!!" argument is nonsense. People have just been brainwashed into conspicuous consumption to prop up the economic metrics.
Okay, so never buy food again and tell me how that goes.
Re: Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
But in many cases using credit will save you money. Two examples would be credit cards with their rewards (as long as you never pay interest) and house/car loans if you manage to get a low rate and invest what you don't pay up front.
The "save money by spending money!!" argument is nonsense. People have just been brainwashed into conspicuous consumption to prop up the economic metrics.
Barring becoming a subsistence farmer, I have to buy groceries. Amex offers 6% cash back on groceries. As long as you pay it off every month, it's a significant savings.
Re: Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You
#10I love that this is both informative, seemingly complete, and genuinely useful, and I really hope it gets in front of the people who will need it the most.