Credit Monitoring 101
Not many people know about credit monitoring, and yet it has importance in just about everything we do in life. Car insurance rates, buying a car or a house, getting a job, getting approved for a loan all are being determined by your credit score. Credit monitoring helps you understand your credit history, provides new information regarding changes or suspicious activities and protects your credit identity. Knowing for certain what is on your credit score is a good way to avoid being surprised when running your credit application. Here are the top reasons why it is important to maintain an open credit monitoring account.
Identify theft.
After Target’s customer’s data breach in 2017, you would think companies have learned from their mistakes. Data breaches still happen all the time though. Despite the aggressively proactive measures put in by companies to curb identity theft, in 2015 alone, $15 billion was lost to identity theft, and 13 million people were affected. Credit monitoring will save you from being the next identity theft victim. You can read more about Identity Theft here.
Save thousands of dollars in interest.
The higher your credit score, the lower the interest rate on loans. Getting your credit score as high as possible will help you save substantial amounts of money on huge purchases like cars and housing. Monitoring your credit to ensure the score keeps rising will keep from a lot of disappoinEspeciallypcially if you haven’t bought a house and a car already. Learn where to Get the Best Personal Loan Rates.
Know who is looking at your account.
Credit monitoring lets you know who is looking at your account. Lenders check to know if your credit score is high enough to offer you any service whenever you request for a new line of credit and these are hard inquiries. Soft inquiries are the ones you carry out yourself; you can check your credit score as often as you want. Soft inquiries have no impact on your credit score, but too many hard inquiries can have negative consequences. You need to give lenders consent before they view your credit information. Credit monitoring enables you to question unauthorized credit checks.
Credit score alerts.
Monitoring your credit ensures you don’t get any surprises when you demand a loan. A credit monitoring service will show an individual report with new information concerning accounts, credit inquiries, etc. Being able to check on your credit score gives you the option to be acutely aware of your credit history before applying for mortgages and loans. Alerts are provided on relevant information regarding records of public nature, delinquencies, and credit score. A 30-point increase in your credit score can make a difference as to enable you to buy a home.
Credit reports have errors on them too, and it is your job to look out for such errors and mistakes. Research reported that 25% of their respondents found an error in their credit reports. Monitoring your credit score could save you thousands of dollars because it enables you to check for mistakes and publish them.
