How you is too young to start worrying about your credit? I had a young client today, who expressed interest in his credit report. This young man is barely 21 years old and recent graduate. With all the concern of a credit check for employment purposes, he wanted to know what his report looked like. We went on the site that offers you a free report once a year for free and pulled his credit report. If you would like this site, please let me know and I will pm you the information, if I post it here it will be in violation of the terms of service and they would pull it off anyway, so if you want the site, please just let me know here in your answer.
Any way, upon pulling his report, we found 4 derogatory remarks that could possibly hurt his chance for employment and these items were all being reported for another 4 years. He had some positive remarks too, but he was really concerned and actually acted quite surprised on what was on there.
Now, 21 is a baby when it comes to credit, he had some retail cards as soon as he graduated high school, he missed a few payments but eventually caught the card up, paid it off and closed the account, however the bad mark is still there.
There was medical charge on there that was also reflecting a negative status from a few years ago, he said that this bill also was taken care of a few years ago. We reviewed the report further and discussed how to dispute these items, he will do that part on his own. He seemed rather embarrassed, I explained that it is good he showed concern young and he can clean it up now and avoid these mistakes later in life.
I took it one step further and explained the soft and hard inquiries to him, this was something that he was unaware of also. When he left my office, he was on a new mission, to clean up his credit.
I am glad to have had this experience with this young man today, It made me realize just how much we need to educate our young people on insurance. I think that we need to make an effort to recruit young people to this site and get them involved in the conversations that we have here.
We have a good thing going here and I think we need to rally together to recruit at least one young person each to the forum.
We could do a poll to start, how old do you think you should be to be concerned about your credit?
Laura,
could you help me establish a poll on this subject with age groups starting with 18-21, 21-25 and so on? thanks
Hi Good,
I have replied on the other thread. Have also send you the same information in a pm. Hope that helps.
Well good,
I am glad that you have posted this here. This is a very big question when it comes to educating the youth regarding their financial behaviour. According to me parents should be the first to do that. My mother worked on me since I was 15. Today at the age of 24 I have a score of 795 (according to the recent pull) and I think it is commendable.
annualcreditreport.com
I always get surprising answers from mrnstr. LOL
There are a handful of sites I share, such as the aformentioned, naca.net, and ftc.gov.
24 w/ 795? Nice!!!
This post reflects just what this forum is about, I totally agree that younger people need to be concerned about their credit and it is our job as adults to educate them. By Laura's mother's work, she has achieved a great credit score that will benefit her in alot of areas in her life. Credit affects alot of things:
Car insurance companies will often run a credit report if your state allows it and alot of states do. According to the insurance industry people will low scores are more likely not to have the income needed to keep a policy in good standing, they also say that these people are more likely to file a claim instead of fixing the damage themselves.
I have a big problem with this because what does your credit have to do with your insurance, states mandate car insurance, it is not like you have a choice in the matter, why should some one pay more who can not afford more, just does not make sense to me. "Since your credit is low, you are probably low income, so we will charge you a higher premium that we know you won't be able to afford" Nothing like beating a dog when he is down. I don't agree with this practice at all.
We have seen on this forum that some employment opportunities are affected by ones credit report, again, another thing that I don't agree with, people with the lower scores probably need the money more, they don't have the option to borrow with out high rates. I just think this has went to far.
I can't imagine the person who has had a tragedy in their family or some type of illness and a perfect credit ratinng can be shot in a matter of months. I think credit reports should only be used for laons and financial issues and should not spill over into other parts of our lives.
What if the credit report is wrong and you can not get it fixed? What if you are a victim of identity theft, which could very well happen. Think about it, if you are a theif are you going to steal the identity of a person with a low score, knowing it is not going to get you anywhere, NO, you are going to go for the guys identity that has the higher score so that you can really profit on your crime.
I just think there are too many ways and situations that affect credit that sometimes are out of your control or a temporary set back could cost you big.
Lunchtime i agree to your points. Even i feel that credit report is being used in fields where decisions should not be based on ones credit rating or the credit score. Any discrepancy is possible due to any kind of mishap. Someones credibility cannot be decided based on his or her financial life.
yes young people do need to be concern and if i were able and had the power i would implement a program that began in all high schools. all students would have to take a mandatory course or two on responsible credit! they would then have to demonstrate that they have actually learned something from the course. if our business students can do things like this then why not the entire country's student population. thing of it is, our credit companies don't want such a thing, they like us being ignorant as a society. so if we can get our youth involved and become more educated, we can help our children avoid the mistakes we've made when we were younger. and Laura, ditto on what morningstar said! that's a heck of a score. :)
debtstinker that is a great idea, I think it should be under the curriculumn some where as a general class so that they all had to take it, maybe as a portion of social studies, credit and its impact would be a good chapter, would be great for students to at least get a working knowledge of, then they could later visit credit repair and maintenance.
I don't think the schools will implement any of this stuff into their regular curriculum, however it does not mean that an organization could not come in and offer it as something extra and maybe the kids can get some type of credit for doing this, might be a good senior project for someone to do.
I don't even know where something like this would fit into a curriculum, do you put it under home economics or in the business classes? where would it have a better fit? Of course it has been forever since I seen a high school curiculum, I probably would not recognize half the stuff in one now.