We all know who they are. The dreaded credit reporting agencies. Three agencies keep score to let potential creditors know your creditworthiness. For some, the very thought of them can make you queasy. And as for consumers, some pay to get their credit cleaned up while others find ways to pay off debts they owe, many fight to keep their scores to high and then there are those who have simply given up. On another note, let’s not forget the segment of people who have no credit which is almost as bad as having bad credit. No matter what we do, we are all tied to these agencies.
Being tied to these agencies is one thing parents need to let their children know about as early as possible. It is important for kids to learn before they run into trouble that taking credit seriously will save them a lot of heartache and headache in the long run. It’s so easy to run up credit and when kids enter colleges often times this is where it starts. They get the idea that paying minimum payments is ok because they can afford it not realizing these payments are set up in a way to keep them paying for a very, very long time. When parents don’t talk about this to their children they miss an opportune time to give them a lesson that many adults wish they’d learned early on. They need to know the ranges of credit scores and how to keep their score in tip-top shape.
The idea of keeping scores in tip-top shape does matter, but what can we do about the current credit reporting guidelines? Is it really fair that a person who is overextended is treated the same as a person who doesn’t pay their bills at all or on time? The overextended credit score may be 600 or less just like that of a person with past due balances. Though there are three agencies topping the list for credit reporting, it’s odd that they don’t always have the same scores nor do we as consumers know which one lenders will use until after our credit has been run. There needs to be more transparency and fairness in credit reporting. Agencies may say that because consumers are entitled to a free report each year they are doing their part. News flash…just because you get the report does not mean that the way the data creates the score is the way it should. Times have changed and so have consumer needs. We need a real-world look at the way the scores are currently calculated.
The goal here is to push consumers like me and yourself to raise better questions to our legislators. How can we get these guidelines looked at and changed if need be? Why aren’t all Americans up in arms about this instead of sitting back at the mercy of the bureaus? Even when a person has good credit, there is always a concern something could go wrong and especially so in this day of heightened identity theft which can render a person almost helpless trying to get things cleared up. So today’s call to action is to take a good look at your existing credit report, find out the credit reporting laws and ask your legislators how they can help make changes on a national level. We need guidelines that are fair to all regardless of gender, social economic status, demographic or a glitch that happened in our lives 5 years ago coming back to haunt us.
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