03/01/2023: Get to Know Your Score

March is National Credit Education Month

Paying for all your expenses in cash, purchasing big-ticket items without a loan, and living off the “credit grid” may sound like an ideal lifestyle to you, but that way of living is outside the scope of possibility for most Wisconsinites today. March is National Credit Education Month, and it’s time to learn that your credit score determines more than the loans you’re approved for and the interest rate you pay. Home and car insurance companies will use credit scores to set premiums, and apartment managers can look at scores to choose who can rent their open units. Throughout the course of a lifetime, higher premiums and interest rates caused by a poor credit score could amass to cost an additional hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Don’t know your credit score? Your credit score is a number ranging from 300 (poor) to 850 (excellent). Every consumer is entitled to a free credit report each year from the three major credit bureaus: TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian. You can request your credit reports at AnnualCreditReport.com and check the report for mistakes and instances where fraud may have occurred. Click on this link Consumer-Content-Credit to learn what categories make up your credit score and tips you can use to improve it.