Credit craziness

The racket the credit bureaus have going is crazy. Consumers pay to see their own score, banks pay to see your score, and the majority of credit files have errors. Some errors are inconsequential like listing the wrong apartment number but many reports have major errors. The consumer has to prove it when the bureaus screw up instead of them having to prove their incorrect information when challenged. All three of my credit reports were saturated with errors and fraud. Saturated. There was way more wrong information than correct information and because I wasn't trying to borrow money at the time it just got worse while I was none the wiser. If someone has your social security number they can do pretty much whatever they want with it and if you don't catch them pretty quickly it's hell getting the information removed later.

I've resorted to paying Equifax every month for credit monitoring to keep an eye on things as they change on my report so I can challenge any problems that might crop up again right away. It feels like protection money. It is protection money but I've spent 2 years cleaning up my report and don't want to be blindsided again so I pay. Yeah, I know you can go to annualcreditreport.com and get a free report (with no score) once a year from each bureau. Waiting months can hurt you and can tank your score. I want to know the day someone screws me over so I can challenge it that day. I lost a killer deal on a house I absolutely loved because I was blindsided in the mortgage broker's office when my credit was pulled. The whole episode cost me a small fortune and the house I wanted and it can happen to anyone.

I love the place I'm buying and I'm grateful that it's all finally coming together. It's half the size and twice the price of the house I lost out on and there is no pool like the other place. I lost the $8000 tax credit. I paid rent for a long time that should have been applied to paying the bank on a house instead. Things stored in the flower shop were stolen that should have been in my new house. I paid a lawyer to clean things up when my disputes were declined. I ended up paying some bills off that I did not owe because other avenues failed. All because someone else had my social and used it and then didn't pay the bills. The whole thing probably cost me in the neighborhood of $70,000 and I still don't have a pool. Pay the protection money and use a credit monitoring service. It doesn't really matter which one as long as they are owned by one of the credit bureaus so the inquiries are soft and don't effect your credit score. If I had been keeping a close watch for the last decade or so instead of recovering from CO poisoning I could have stopped this in it's tracks years ago. Instead the damage escalated and took longer and so much more money to repair.