Credit Busters - credit management

Black Enterprise, Nov, 2001 by Tanisha Ann Sykes

Your credit report won't have a ghost of a chance unless you avoid these 10 foul-ups

JUDITH E. DAVIS HAD TOP-NOTCH CREDIT UNTIL SHE HITCHED HERSELF AND her credit to her former fiance. The decision initiated a host of credit foul-ups that almost ruined her life. "Having great credit meant I was able to do whatever I wanted. I wasn't wealthy, but I had access to [things] if I needed [them]," she says. It was 1998. Davis, 35, was an office manager at Carr America Realty Corp. in Washington, D.C. Her fiance was an audit manager at an advertising firm. Eight months into their courtship, he lost his job.

He soon fell behind in making his car payments, and "he said he couldn't catch up. He told me he talked to the people at Toyota [about getting a new car because the `repo man' was coming for his old one]," says Davis, who is a screenwriter now living in New York. To make a long story short, Davis bought him a new $30,000 SUV on her credit, thinking there wouldn't be a problem since their finances would soon become one.

Again, he missed payments. "I even deferred payment on my own car note one month to pay his," she declares. Despite her best efforts to keep both car notes afloat, her credit suffered.

Unfortunately, love is sometimes blind, so Davis continued to cover her former beau's expenses at the cost of her own--and her credit rating. "He told me that in college he had a friend who gave him [insider-trading] information about a stock deal. And now he had to pay the money back or he would go to jail," she explains. "I helped him because he was going through a rough time. Most of the time, I would help him just to shut him up."

After almost two years, having helped him "with $5,000 here, $1,500 there," the money she gave (and lent) him totaled $30,000. She soon figured him for a swindler (and a court in Massachusetts verified that he had done this to another woman). She took him to court in Virginia in September 1999 and will receive $12,500 in restitution when he is released from prison. "My lawyer said these cases are hard to prove, so I accepted the judgment," she says. So she's out some money, but her satisfaction is the 18-month jail term he is currently serving. "At the time, I felt so frantic," she says, especially since her father was ill. "But life isn't about regrets. Things work out for good people eventually." Currently, she is rebuilding her credit and says she will think twice before lending her credit to anyone else.

Despite the conundrum Davis found herself in, she could have saved herself a degree of heartache had she not commingled her credit (see foul-up No. 3) with someone else. Unfortunately, Davis' poor judgment is more common than we'd like to believe, since all of us know someone (it may even be ourselves) who has failed to properly safeguard his or her credit. Still, you can avoid such a calamity happening to you (again?) by protecting your financial future against these 10 credit busters:

1. Failing to get your credit report. "Get your credit report each year from each [of the major] credit bureaus," offers Greg McBride, a financial analyst with Bankrate Inc. (www.bankrate.com) in North Palm Beach, Florida. Confirm that all of the accounts in your file are up-to-date and correct. "It's important to actively monitor your credit report. Credit reports are often used for more than credit purposes," says McBride, "Often employers and landlords have access to them." Contact Transunion (www.transunion.com, 800-916-8800); Experian (www.experian.com, 888-397-3742); and Equifax (www.equifax.com, 800-685-111) for your credit file.

2. Failing to establish your own line of credit (i.e., married people who didn't have credit previously). Getting credit in your own name is essential and could be critical if you're planning to divorce. If you are an authorized user on your spouse's account, you may lose your privileges once the divorce is final, unless your spouse continues the agreement.

3. Commingling your credit with someone who is a bad credit risk (i.e., a spouse, a co-signer, or an authorized user who you know has bad credit). When you cosign, you should know that you are responsible for the account if the other person defaults on the loan. Davis got an American Express Gold card for her former fiance; she was sideswiped with nearly $6,000 in debt thanks to his spending sprees.

4. Neglecting to provide the same identifying information each time you apply for credit (i.e., using your full name one time and leaving out your middle name the next). "It helps to make sure the process is completely accurate," says Jeffrey Junkas, public relations specialist for Transunion in Chicago. "If you make sure you have your name, phone number, Social Security number, etc., the same way all the time, you're going to reduce the chances that another file could be created."

5. Paying late or failing to pay at all. Tiffany Warren got trapped in a credit snare when she was in college. She didn't think she'd have to repay a retail store credit card with a $250 credit limit. "I was so fresh and so new," she says of getting her first credit card in 1992. "I would get these bills stating $15 payments, but I didn't understand what the minimum meant against the balance," says Warren, 28, manager of diversity programs for a major advertising association in New York. "I would pay the minimum, but my balance wasn't going down, so I became frustrated and made a choice to put it aside. By my junior year, I couldn't get [credit]." She eventually paid off the card in 1997. Between interest and late fees, it cost her $600. "No matter how small the balance, if you don't pay it, it completely affects your world," she adds. Remember to mail your payment five to seven days before the due date, or pay online or over the phone.