Q. Can my employer get my credit report?

A. Only if you say it’s okay. A consumer reporting agencies may not supply information about you to your employer, or to a prospective employer without your consent.

Q. Can creditors, employers or insurers get a report that contains medical information about me?

A. Not without your approval.

Q. How can I stop a consumer reporting agencies from including me on lists for unsolicited credit and insurance offers?

A. Creditors and Insurers may use consumer reporting agencies file information as a basis for sending you unsolicited offers. These offers must include a toll free number for you to call if you want to remove your name and address from lists for two years, completing a form that consumer reporting agencies provides for this purpose will keep your name off lists permanently.

Q. Do I have right to sue for damages?

A. You may sue a consumer reporting agency, a user or in some cases a provider of consumer reporting agency data in state or federal court for most violations of FCRA. If you win, defendant will have to pay damages to reimburse you for attorney fees to extent ordered by court.

Q. Are there other laws I should know about?

A. Yes. If your credit application was denied, Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) requires creditors to specify why if you ask. For example, creditor must tell you whether you were denied because you have no credit report with a consumer reporting agency or because consumer reporting agency says you have delinquent obligations. The ECOA also requires creditors to consider additional information you might supply about your credit history. You may want to find out why creditor denied your application before you contact consumer reporting agencies. See Equal Credit Opportunity Act article by credit and you.com

Stay On Top Of Your Credit …

Before financing anything, car, furniture, or a home, it’s a god idea to make sure your credit report is clean. Errors can often be quickly removed. And no sales person should ever know more about your credit report than you.

Once you have kept your list for a couple of weeks, you already start to make some fascinating discoveries. It was not big amounts on my list that had to be dealt with, as I had imagined. These were essential things, which there was no way I could do without. However, small sums on my list were doing damage! I was buying something to eat every morning before going into office, but I was totally unaware of what it was costing me. I was spending 2.75 GBP every morning and that was adding up to around 55 GBP per month! As soon as I realised this, I started making my own breakfast. In addition to spotting things like this, I could turn to my list at any point during month and see how much money I had left until next pay day. This way, there was never any danger that I would have to go into overdraft on my bank account.

This in itself represented a real saving that I started making each month and once I did away with one or two other unnecessary expenses, I was making very significant savings, which I then put towards paying off my mortgage debt. Keeping a list of this type is a simple yet powerful tool because it will clearly and simply show you where your money is going, and give you control to make some changes.