Monday, March 5, 2012

Young, Fabulous, and BROKE

In my mission to become debt free, I am also trying to better educate myself on the subject.  I've had Suze Orman's book, The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous, and Broke, for some time now but just haven't made the time to sit down and read it.  Well since eliminating my debt seems to be consuming my free time these days, I've found great motivation to pick the book up and begin reading.

The first section I have read is about becoming aware of your FICO score.  Like me, Suze believes knowledge is power.  And, knowing how you rank with your score puts you ahead of the game and enables you to get a game plan together if your score isn't up to par.

Now for me, paying the $50 to get my scores from the three credit agencies just isn't worth it at the moment.  I am not in the market for a car, house, loan, or credit card.  So paying to get my score right now, when I don't even need to use it, just doesn't make since to me.

What I did get out of reading this section of Suze's book is to get my credit report from the three angencies.  Your credit report can give you a generalized idea of what your FICO score may be.  Basically, you want to make sure you are in good standing with all three angencies and you don't have any negative marks on your reports.

The best thing about all of this is, the three reporting agencies are required to give everyone one free credit report a year!  This is good because you can monitor your credit report and make sure everything on there is accurate.  Basically, make sure you haven't fallen victim to identy theft!  To get your free credit report you can go to www.annualcreditreport.com.

So, I checked out my credit report with all three agencies and I am happy to say everything seemed accurate!  Although, I do have a lot of debt, and my debt to credit ratio is pretty high.  Even though I pay all my bills on time I still may not have the most ideal FICO score until I pay my debt down some more.

For this reason, I am going to hold off on finding out my FICO scores.  Personally, I think it would be better to wait until I get my debt down.  And, I probably won't inquire about it until it comes closer to the time I want to buy a house or a car.


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