Credit flows in cycles. It starts out flowing freely until the economy takes a dive. Then payments get later or stop coming when jobs dry up. In response, banks turn off the credit tap. Once that happens, the only people getting car loans and low interest rates on credit cards are those with high credit scores. Here are three tips to help you make sure you are one of the lucky.Get your credit report once a year. This will prevent erroneous or false information from lowering your credit score. Obtain your credit score. Your credit score will not be on your credit report. Unfortunately, you may have to pay to see your score. Right now(August, 2011) FICO has a deal on their website for a free trial for their credit monitoring service. Sign up and your score will be sent to you. Cancel within 30 days and you will not have to pay for the score. Understand your credit score and how to improve it. New legislation may help with that. It requires lenders to provide ”Risk-Base Pricing Notices”. If you do not qualify for the best interest rate that a bank offers, you must be provided your credit score along with key factors that adversely affected your score. Look at the bad points in the notice and work to improve them.
Improving your credit just 50 points can save you tens of thousands of dollars over your lifetime in interest payments on your car loan in Colorado (or wherever you live). It can get you the house that you want or the car that you need.