The Civil Life

It’s not clear who’s worse, the people filling out credit card applications after stealing your identity or the credit card companies themselves. At least there is some chance the identity thieves will go to jail after taking over your credit, while the credit card companies enrich themselves legally with hidden fees and exorbitant interest rates. My wife and I signed up for American Express Blue Cash, thinking that we’d be making 5% back on some of our purchases, and intially we did, but not for long.

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In a previous post, I discussed how a credit score is calculated. What happens when your credit score is too low? A few years ago I helped a friend rebuild her credit score from the bottom. In college, she had a serious medical problem that wasn’t covered by health insurance, and went to the hospital associated with her college. She couldn’t pay, and the college, her college, sent the collection agencies to work her over and destroyed her credit. Being the type of person who felt bad about jaywalking, my friend went into a panic, thinking she could never escape. Seeing this happen, I couldn’t let my friend be treated this way, so I helped her work out a plan:

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The economic slowdown and bad loans have taken a bite out of everyone’s credit score. Even if your credit score hasn’t changed, you’ll find it much harder to get good terms on loans. If your credit score has been significantly lowered, you’ll find it difficult to get loans and you may be locked out of other opportunities, like nice apartment rentals. In this post, we’ll talk about what a credit score is.

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Avoiding bad deals is an important part of maintaining your financial health.  It’s shocking to hear from friends how they have been preyed upon by high pressure sales people that sell anything from time share condos to home furnishings.  Fortunately, you can detect these sales creatures by the tactics they have in common:

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