Credit and You
In today's economy, it's vital that a person establish and maintain an excellent credit and background reputation. Once an individual has these, another person may attempt to acquire those credentials through identity theft.
This tutorial will introduce websites, books, and periodical resources that may be used by the public and the businessman, employer, or landlord to learn how to access, evaluate, and protect credit and background records.
| Books | Periodical | Websites |
50 Ways to Protect Your Identity and Your Credit: Everything You Need to Know about Identity Theft, Credit Cards, Credit Repair, and Credit Reports explains what identity theft is and what it can do to an individual's finances. The book has chapters on credit cards, credit reports, and credit repair.
The American Bar Association Guide to Credit and Bankruptcy covers law and legislation on the topics of consumer credit, credit cards, and bankruptcy.
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Improving Your Credit Score is a layman's explanation of credit reports and scoring, how to read a credit report, developing a good score by paying bills on time, repairing credit, and coping with a credit crisis.
The Credit Repair Answer Book tells about types of debt. The author describes how to establish credit and use it well. Advice is rendered about collections and repossession of personal property. The book helps with bankruptcy and reestablishing credit after a divorce.
Credit Repair Kit for Dummies is on credit ratings and how to improve one's score.
CreditBooster Ultimate Guide to a Better Credit Score: Unlock the Mysteries of Your Credit Report and Improve Your Score speaks of credit scoring systems and ratings.
Entrepreneur Magazine's Ultimate Credit and Collections Handbook is a manual for small business finances. It has guidance on collecting business accounts.
Girl, Get Your Credit Straight: A Sister's Guide to Ditching Your Debt, Mending Your Credit, and Building a Strong Financial Future goes into the emotional and cultural reasons behind getting into trouble with credit. The author interprets the credit report and scoring that build a person's reputation with lenders. Chapters clarify how to spend wisely in order to reduce debt and finance one's dreams while retaining one's financial balance.
The Guerrilla Guide to Credit Repair: How to Find Out What's Wrong with Your Credit Rating -- and How to Fix It has details on how to contact three major credit bureaus and get a copy of your credit report, and how to decipher and understand the report's complex codes, numbers, and implications. Step-by-step, learn to correct errors and clean up your credit history.
Know your legal rights as set forth in the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the Fair Billing Act, and the Truth in Lending Act to protect you against credit abuse. Sample credit reports, form letters, and proven techniques for credit repair make up the rest of the book.
Identity Theft Toolkit: How to Recover from and Avoid Identity Theft is published by Self-Counsel Press as an aid to those who experience this financial disaster. The writer speaks to the subject of preventing identity theft.
Ohio Landlord-Tenant Law is a Banks-Baldwin volume. It contains the actual laws dealing with the rights of the landlord and the tenant.
The Safe Hiring Manual: The Complete Guide to Keeping Criminals, Imposters and Terrorists Out of the Workplace talks about employee screening and selection from the view of the employer.
The Wall Street Journal Complete Identity Theft Guidebook: How to Protect Yourself from the Most Pervasive Crime in America is an invaluable source for guarding one's credit from criminal activity. In this book is material about the credit report itself; there are sample letters in Appendix One. In Appendix Two are identity theft logs. Appendix Three has the laws that protect the consumer in this situation.
Financial Stress Requires Triage and Long-term Care
#1 Background Checks https://www.1-background-checks.com
The site has no set-up fees or monthly charges. Their services are online reports such as social security verification, driving records, county and state criminal records, nationwide criminal database, credit report pre-employment, nanny search, tenant screening and credit report with score. The Pricing webpage lets the customer view a sample report and product details.
AnnualCreditReport.com https://www.annualcreditreport.com
An amendment to the Fair Credit Reporting Act requires each of the credit reporting agencies to provide a person with a free copy of his/her credit report every 12 months. An individual who has had their application for credit, insurance, or employment denied may request a free copy of the report within 60 days of receiving notice of the action against him/her. The notice will give the name, address, and telephone number of the credit reporting agency that furnished the negative data. A person may also be entitled to one free credit report per year upon certification in writing that the person is unemployed and plans to look for a job within 60 days, or is on welfare, or if the credit report is inaccurate due to fraud.
Citi Credit Bureau http://www.citicredit.net/tenant-screening-questions.html
The bureau does mortgage reports, employment screening, and tenant screening. This is a secure site. Credit reports have a FICO score.
Equifax http://equifaxproducts.com
Equifax Credit Watch has three levels of service. Their Credit Watch Gold alerts the customer within 24 hours of any key changes to his/her three nationwide credit reports.
Experian http://www.experian.com/
Experian has business and personal services. The customer can see his/her credit report, credit report and credit score, or reports from Equifax, Transunion, and Experian at once, depending on pricing. Searching the business database is free. If results are found, the user may choose from variously priced business reports.
Free3BureauCreditReport.com https://www.free3bureaucreditreport.com
The site provides automatic alerts when activity is detected to your credit files at all three credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. The customer has unlimited online access to the 3-in-1 Credit Report and Triple Score.
National Association of Independent Landlords http://nail-usa.com/eviction.htm
Visit the site, then call 1-800-352-3395 to ask about setting up an account. Pricing includes credit reports, eviction reports, criminal reports, and full background searches.
TransUnion http://www.transunion.com
The site claims to have credit histories on 500 million consumers. The company offers services to businesses and individuals.