Credit!

So, having recently exercised my credit score to purchase a car, I thought I'd take the time to make sure the old credit report is in order. My cautionary tale: The car dealer initially offered me interest rates in the high 6% to low 7% range, which I thought was way too high. I told them I wouldn't accept anything above 5.5%. They came back almost immediately with rates below 5% and said the reason was my Equifax credit score (which they originally checked) was much lower than my other two scores (which they later used to get the lower rate).

As I suspected, the lower Equifax score was due to that damn hospital in North Carolina that delayed treatment for the worst food poisoning of my life because the admissions woman could not fit my entire DC address into the character limits of the patient information database. She finally got tired of my continuous puking into the bowl they had provided for this purpose, and clearly cut some corners to fit my address in. I never got a bill, they referred it to a collection agency that obviously didn't try too hard to contact me since my phone number is still the same. After discovering it on my credit report two years ago, I promptly paid the debt. And yet there it sits on my credit report making a relatively big difference in my ability to get a good loan.

When I last cleaned up my report two years ago, it was a tedious process. But government saves the day! The feds have since passed laws to make credit reports more accessible and to make closing accounts much easier. So, 20 minutes and some basic information about my current debts later, I just printed (well, actually CutePDF-ed) credit reports from all three major companies via this website.

The Equifax report is particularly useful because it describes how different elements of the report contribute to a credit score (and therefore how to avoid low scores). From one of the reports I also found this FTC brochure with more detailed information on managing credit reports (government strikes again!). I found the TransUnion report to be most helpful in cleaning up old accounts--it provides the full account number and phone number of the company holding the account.

My next project: a Target charge card my mom opened in both our names in 1998--still open.