I am not a financial advisor and this is not financial advice.
What’s the Point?
Credit scores unfortunately have the power to determine our quality of life. The lower the credit score, the less options for housing, cars, and other things. A low credit score will cause you to pay double or more for something which lessens the amount of money you have to spend on other necessities and wants. There is definitely a “low credit score” tax and we should do all that we can to avoid it. The biggest thing we can do is to make sure that only we have the power to impact our own credit scores. It is much easier to live with and correct the choices we make ourselves, it is much harder to deal with the outcome of actions made by anyone else.
As you’ve probably heard many times in the past, you should freeze your credit if you are not actively using it. This ensures that nobody, including you, can open new lines of credit or run credit checks. It’s important to understand that a freeze does not mean that your credit score is frozen, it just means no new credit lines can be added.
This Sounds Expensive and Difficult
It’s Free. You can freeze, unfreeze, or thaw your credit at anytime. Personally, I never unfreeze my credit and I always use the thaw option as it allows me to set a date for the freeze to return. This means that if I do need to run a credit check to open a new line of credit, I can thaw my credit for a few days to make sure I do not forget to freeze my credit when complete. The best part about the process of freezing credit is that it is instant so you do not need to unfreeze your credit days before you are ready to add a new credit line. Seriously, there is no downside I can think of related to freezing your credit, it is one of the most win-win situations that exist because it ensures that only you are in control of when new credit is opened on your account. With the recent reports of American social security numbers being leaked in combination with all the information that exists about each one of us online, this is an easy first step to secure your identity.
How do I Start?
Visit Experian, Transunion, and Equifax’s websites and go through the Freeze process. If this is your first time visiting these websites you will probably need to create an account and verify that you are who you say you are. For context, these are the 3 major credit bureau’s and freezing your credit with all 3 is necessary for proper security of your credit. This is the most I’ll say on this because I highly recommend you continue your research by directly visiting those websites. They can provide much more detailed and accurate detail than what is in scope for me in this journal.
After all and as always, CIEL AMBRE’s content is strictly security opinion from a cybersecurity professional and concerned father.