I never miss a payment, never go over my limits, have never bounced a cheque and try not to have too high of a ratio between used credit to available credit. I recently got a HELOC and the lender told me my credit score, which was 740, though I suspect it may have gone up a bit in the last few months as my used to available ratio has gone down.

I probably should write and get my report mailed to me as I haven’t gone over it with a fine toothed comb in quite a while and am over due.

The truth of the matter is that in general, we AREN’T taught basic information about credit. Especially not in high school. Everything I know about credit I’ve learned on my own, either by trial and error, by reading Suze Orman books, watching your show RELIGIOUSLY, and from Oprah’s debt diet program (BTW- another great resource: check it out at:
http://www.oprah.com/subtopic/money/debt).

They get yah early too. I was wooed by my first credit card company at 19, penniless and eating Kraft dinner in university. It’s only by my own personal common sense that I’ve always known to never ever have more then two credit cards, despite the constant “Capital One” applications, and cold phone solicitations. Even my local grocery store Sobey’s is trying to offer me a Mastercard this week (gees, all I went in for was bread and milk). Even with the cards I do have, it’s not that easy reading all the gobly gook legal mumbo jumbo small fine print typed with grey ink, let alone understanding the implications of it in plain English.

I’ve only just received my credit reports for the first time in the mail this summer, but what a run around that was!!! By law, every credit reporting agency has to provide you with one copy of your credit report per year FOR FREE. Which in this day and age of identity theft, is an absolute must do for everyone.

But the websites for both Equifax AND Transunion are really covert and underhanded about it. Unless you are a die hard internet research geek like me, you’d be hard pressed to find the FREE REPORT information web page at all.

They do that on purpose, so that they can convince you up front that you should really BUY it from them for a low monthly maintenance fee- and that’s the darn credit reporting agencies for pete’s sake!!

Bottom line is that the less information you are given, the more likely you will accidentally make a mistake with THEIR products. Which raises your interest rates and increases THEIR profits. Get it? I learned that little trick from the pbs special “Secret History of the Credit Card”- which you can stream video for free (it takes a while to watch, but boy, did it ever open my financial eyes). Check it out at:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/credit/

Gail, that’s why your show and your work is REALLY, REALLY, important for average joe consumers like us. The knowledge you impart gives us a fighting chance leg up on just the sheer education on this stuff. For which all your dedicated fans are grateful!

BTW- here are the correct links I encourage everyone to cut and paste to get you DIRECTLY to the print offs to snail mail for your free credit reports. Warning though, every piece of data this is submitted is used in their data collection, including what you write on the forms. So if they ask you your social insurance number for example, leave it out like I did, as they can still retrieve your credit report without it.

http://equifax.com/ecm/canada/EFXCreditReportRequestForm.pdf

and

http://www.transunion.ca/docs/personal/Consumer%20Disclosure%20Request%20Form%20_en.pdf

you also need the information on this page:

http://www.transunion.ca/ca/personal/creditreport/consumerdisclosure/mail_en.page

Wishing everyone who reads these blogs continued financial empowerment!

Information is on the right hand side of the page.
TransUnion also has a free report by mail. (Credit ratings only not your credit score).

When I applied for an apartment with my fiance (at the time), I had excellent credit and he had terrible credit. They would combine the credit and we would not have been approved, so they took him off the application and solely had me on the lease.

I was in a similar situation when I moved in with my husband. His credit was fine, mine not so much. But we were approved for the apartment before we had to hand over any money. I was lucky in the sense that the head of my bank was willing to fill out the paperwork for free.

I was nervous about being denied, so I went and made an extra payment on my cards, just to lower the debt a bit before they went checking.

How does it work when there are two people trying to get an apartment, and 1 has bad credit but the other has good, but both people have to submit records for the application? Does the person with bad credit suck away all the possibilities for the person with good credit?

It was suggested to me that both people need good credit, but how does a person with bad credit live somewhere (if not for a guarantor)?

If anyone has advice or experiences, I would love to hear it before we pay money for our banks to fill out the necessary paperwork and give a certified cheque – there’s no point in us applying if we’ll be denied because of his crappy credit.