Credit reporting Agencies such as Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion can and are sometimes required to provide you with the option of turning on fraud report related to your credit. This is not a negative or bad thing for a person’s credit.

In general fraud reports give a warning to lenders and merchants that are thinking of providing credit that someone or group may have access to your identity.

When a business sees the alert on your credit report, they must verify your identity before issuing you credit. As part of this verification process, the business may try to contact you directly. This may cause some delays if you’re trying to obtain credit.

Providing a cell phone number, where you can be reached easily can expedite this process so that you personally are not impacted by the fraud alert. If someone has stolen your wallet or identity these alerts can tip you off to the potential fraud and provide the businesses an alert to be extra diligent about issuing credit.

Two Types of Fraud Alerts

1. Initial alert: Lasts for 90 days on Your Credit Report.

Steps to Take

1. Contact your credit reporting agencies and ask that an initial fraud alert be placed on your credit report Use In these Situations
2. If your wallet has been stolen or if you’ve been taken in by a “phishing” scam.
3. If you suspect you have been, or are about to be, a victim of identity theft.

What Happens?

Tip! When you place an initial fraud alert on your credit report, you’re entitled to one free credit report from each of the three nationwide consumer reporting companies.

2. Extended Alerts: Lasts for seven years on Your Credit Report.Who is Eligible

• Victims of Identity theft are eligible to have extended alert placed on their credit reports.

Steps to take

• Provide the consumer reporting company with an “identity theft report.”
• Benefits
• After setting up the Extended Alert, you’re entitled to two free credit reports within twelve months from each of the three nationwide consumer reporting companies.
• The consumer reporting companies will remove your name from marketing lists for pre-screened credit offers for five years.
• You may ask them to put your name back on the list before then if you choose.

This is the most popular type of mortgage which has a fixed rate of interest and monthly payments. Fixed rate mortgage is offered for two periods - 15 years and 30 years. The popularity of a fixed-rate mortgage stems from the fact that borrowers do not like to repay their loans at a fluctuating rate of interest. Besides, with a fixed-rate mortgage, you can get a great deal if you apply for the mortgage when the rates are low. To get an idea of mortgage rates in the US, go to this mortgage calculator.

The advantages of a 30-year mortgage include having a lot of time to repay, low monthly payments, more money in hand for other expenses, and greater tax deductions. The disadvantages include a higher interest rate as compared to a 15-year mortgage, in the initial phase; the money goes into paying for the interest charged and not the principal.

With a 15-year mortgage, the biggest advantage is that you build equity at double the speed and reduced overall interest rates. Disadvantages include high monthly payments, reduced tax deductions, and often buyers are restricted to purchasing a smaller home.

Widespread check fraud has forced banks to adopt stricter postures with respect to cashing checks. The number of checking accounts that have been “closed for a cause” has been increasing at the rate of 20% per annum. Other reasons for banks being forced to close accounts include sudden financial difficulties that can leave people with little money to withdraw and their checks may bounce. The increased use of debit cards is another reason why checking accounts are being closed.

Go here for an in-depth review of the situation.

A good credit score brings so many pluses into a man’s life that it really is worth working for. If you’re married, you gain your wife’s respect; if you’re single there’s a better chance that you will get the girl you take to a fancy dinner when you flash your card; your peers envy you because you always have money at the end of the month for the tickets to the series-deciding game.

Yes, great for the ego and actually useful for your finances, it helps you get around in this world. So how do you do it? Well, here are some pointers for you.

1. Ensure that there are no glaring mistakes in your credit card report. This is particularly important if you’re planning to apply for a loan. Correcting an anomaly in your credit card report can take between 30-90 days so act as soon as you catch a wrong entry in your report.

2. Inculcate the habit of paying your bills on time, it improves your standing with your banks, a missed payment can set you back by crucial points in your credit score.

3. Your spending and repayment cycle also affect your credit score because in your FICO score, significant importance is given to the amount you owe on your credit card vis-à-vis your credit limit. Try to keep your balance around 25% of your card limit.

4. Strive to repay your loans; do not keep shuffling it from one card to another. It will not take you anywhere and you will only end up lowering your credit score. If you close one or more of your credit cards, you will end up increasing your balance to limit ratio which will hurt your score.

5. Keep a credit score from all three credit reporting companies, Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax. This is because the information about your score will vary with the reporting company and each may have a different credit score to offer. Lenders may or may not refer the score from each company, so it is in your interests to ensure that the feedback they give is as accurate as possible.

The Australian has warned that the coming Christmas may see a spate of credit card thefts and frauds. According to research firm Cannex, credit card usage will increase by 25% and will hit a whopping $ 17 billion in Australia.

Cannex states that the 13.1 million credit cards that are in use in Australia could rack up purchases of more than $1,300 each. The increased exposure of credit cards during the season has prompted MembersEquity Bank to ask its members to be extra careful in how they handle their cards in public places.

Tony Beck, who heads the workplace business at MembersEquity states “Credit cards are great for convenience, but criminals are getting smarter and the incidence of fraud is increasing. Consumers need to protect the security of their card and PIN to ensure they have ultimate control over their accounts.”

You can take precautions such as memorizing your pin, safeguarding your card, ensure that the sales person is swiping the card correctly, store your receipts, and always take a receipt if you are canceling a purchase.

Christmas season is increasingly being looked upon as an excuse to shop and its spirit as a festival is perhaps on the wane. These are the views of F&C Asset Management.

72 Point Limited undertook research for F&C Asset Management and found that 17% of parents and grandparents felt that they would have to bear the brunt of crazy Christmas shopping and it will take them more than a month to repay their credit card borrowings. The survey was conducted across 2,194 respondents and it found that a staggering 45% of the parents felt that they could not afford to save for their children’s future and yet 40% of the respondents will be shelling out £100 per child on Christmas gifts and 70% will be spending in excess of £50 per child.

Be forewarned, merriness of the spirit in this season will leave you feeling all warm for quite some time, spending merrily, that too on credit, will only leave you feeling cold as the season peters out.

I first picked this up over at My Money Blog.  Basically winter is an expensive time to run any household, especially if you live in a country / area where winter means cold temperatures and high oil prices.  While there are plenty of ways to save money from simply by opening your curtains during the day to let the sun heat up a room and closing them at night to keep heat in to  keeping windows and doors closed, these will not keep you toasty for the entire winter.  No, the only way that’s going to happen is by heating the house with oil fired central heating, gas or a stove.

If you are serious about saving money on your utility bills may I suggest the Home Energy Saver tool.  You enter in your ZIP code and enter in some more details about where you live, then the tool returns various way you can save money and what it will save you.  Entering in more information about your home will allow the tool to provide a more accurate estimate of potential savings.

Some of the cost-cutting measures will require you to upgrade your home with more insulation, new triple glazed windows and such.  Obviously this is going to cost a fair whack of money up front, but the tool covers this by giving you an estimated payback period.

It costs nothing to have a go and some of the ideas may well be feasible for you.  I highly advise trying it out.

Now that you have acknowledged that you are in debt, the second stage of getting out of debt is planning your escape.  Don’t take it lightly, I mean escape when I say it.  Debt is such a heavy burden to carry, it gets you down and saps your will until you reach your lowest.

Meta Spending Tips
To break the cycle of being in debt and adding to it you need to stop your spending, which sounds easier than you might think.  If you want out of debt then you’ve got to stop adding to it, so here are a few tips to help you on the way.

A word of warning here.  None of these tips are particularly ground breaking on their own, but when you take them together they are a very powerful way of changing your spending habits.

• Adopt a new attitude to money.  By that I mean you must become frugal, you want to hold onto you money.  It is your money, get that into your head.  You need to to hold onto as much of it as possible.
• If possible consolidate your credit card debt onto a single 0% interest card.  This will mean you will no longer be spending money paying off interest that can otherwise be used to pay off your balance.
• Hack your lifestyle.  Start cutting out costs like those lunches out, concerts and clothes shopping sprees.  None of this will help you get out of debt, so stop it.
• Think laterally round a problem.  When your car decides to break down, don’t jump at the first solution as this may be the most expensive.  Ask friends and family for help until you find the answer to your problem.
• Break it down.  Looking at your whole life makes the idea of saving money hard to comprehend because there are so many facets to modern living.  Break down your life into components such as eating, entertainment, transportation, communication etc.  Then go through each part of your life with a fine comb and start ripping out things you don’t need to spend on.
• Start reading.  You aren’t the first person to have a spending problem.  There are tons of great blogs where you can read up on other people and their personal finance experiences.  Learn from how they stopped spending and got themselves out of debt.
• Track your spending.  The more cold data you can gather on your spending patterns the easier it is to spot trends and eradicate overspend.  There are plenty of online applications you can use such as  Expenses Tracker,  Pear Budget and DimeWise to name but a few.

Recommended Reading
Here are a few resources to help you save money.  There will be a degree of overlap, but if you can get through them all you’ll find lots of ways to stop spending.

• 118 ways to save money in college (Scolarships Around The US)
• 101 ways to save money (CreditCave)
• 66 ways to save money (Pueblo, CO Citizen Information Center)
• 20 strange ways to save money (Bankrate)
• How to stop accumulating debt (Binary Dollar)
• The psychology of spending (Get Rich Slowly)