Saturday, October 27, 2012

Paying off Debt? Credit Monitoring is Key


Credit monitoring is an important service for anyone who cares about his or her finances and who wants to have a handle on whether he is creditworthy enough to get favorable loan rates. However, if you have recently paid off debt or are in the process of paying off debt, credit monitoring becomes especially important.

How Does Credit Monitoring Help in Debt Payoffs

If you are paying off credit card, personal loan, or other consumer debt, using a credit monitoring service is a smart choice. Credit monitoring services through http://www.identityguard.com/ silver, gold, or platinum will all provide you with relevant and timely information about your credit situation, while targeted programs through CreditProtectX3® or CreditProtect® will all help you to keep up to date about what is going on with your credit information.

Using one of these services can be very helpful when paying off debt for many reasons including the following:
  • You can track the impact that your debt payoff is having on your credit score. 30 percent of your credit score is determined based on the amount of available credit you are actually using. This is called your “credit utilization” rate. The less of your credit you use, the higher your credit score will go since using less shows that you have a good handle on your debt and that you aren’t in debt trouble. Essentially, this means that as you pay off debt and you lower your utilization, you can see your score going up. That’s an exciting feeling.
  • You can see on a regular basis that your payments are being applied and your debt totals are going down. A credit report gives you all of your credit information in one convenient place. This means you can get an overall idea of your debt picture. As you reduce the debt owed, you’ll see on your credit report that your remaining balances grow smaller and smaller. This will help to keep you motivated and keep you on track as you work to repay the debts that you owe.
  • You can make sure your hard work isn’t undermined. When you are paying off debt it can sometimes be a struggle, but it is worth it to try to get and stay debt-free or to get rid of toxic debt at high interest rates. However, you don’t want to end up having all your hard work impacted by someone stealing your identity and getting credit in your name that doesn’t get paid. Although you can remove accounts from your credit report that were put there as a result of identity theft, this can take a long time and you need to actually take action to have the accounts removed (which means you need to know the accounts are there). Credit monitoring through IDENTITY GUARD®, CreditProtectX3®, or CreditProtect® helps you to know when something is amiss sooner than you otherwise would, so you can take the right action.
For all of these reasons, it just makes sense to use a credit monitoring service during your journey to repay your debts.