Credit

Credit is the lifeblood of your financial security. Properly used and maintained it provides you with the flexibility to deal with whatever life throws at you. Using credit properly requires 2 things. First, self discipline. Credit is a financial drug that, if you're not careful, you can easily overdose on. This is a problem that many college students have. They are granted their first credit card, spend freely forgetting that will need to pay back what they borrowed and then find themselves incapable of paying the bill when it comes due. As with any drug credit abuse can be a problem for anyone regardless of their income or background. It knows no boundaries. We all need to be careful and make sure we don't steadily increase our outstanding debt year after year until we discover we can't meet our bills.

In addition to watching our own personal spending habits we need to be on the alert in order to detect errors and criminal activity in our credit profiles. This brings us to the second thing we need to do. We need to be proactive, distribute our credit card use over several different cards, periodically check our credit report for errors or fraud and address any issues as soon and thoroughly as possible.

The following links will give you the information you need to stay on top of your credit profile enabling you access to credit whenever you need to.

Credit Reports - Exposing the Mystery

Credit Responsibility

How to Improve Your Credit Score

Credit Inquiries

Credit Repair Companies

Security Freeze

How Damaging is a Short Sale to Your Credit Score

VantageScore