Getting Credit And Building A Credit Score At A Young Age

Are you young and don’t have credit yet?  Have you not seen your credit report and credit score?  Not sure how credit monitoring or identity theft protection works?

Everyone must start somewhere!  Establishing credit can be difficult and confusing, especially for someone at a young age.

You may be going through what I went through.  When I was a teenager, about 18 years old, I kept asking myself “how do I get started?”

Like me, eventually you will want to purchase a car, get your own apartment, get a cell phone, apply for a job or get a credit card.  The good news is, starting out you should not have any blemishes on your credit history, like a late payment or a collection account that could haunt you for years.

Here is what I did.  I began by opening a bank account.  I did not qualify for their credit card, so I got a secured credit card, which required me to put down money as a deposit.  The few hundred dollars I put down became my credit limit.  The good part was my secured card reported to the Credit Bureaus.  After a year of on time payments, I was able to convert that to a regular credit card.

I also applied for a department store card and gas card.  I made sure to pay the balance on time each month.  I knew everything I did would report to my credit reports and impact my credit score. So, I was careful.

Keep in mind; it is important to have a mix of credit on your record.  In addition, uncontrolled use of your credit, secured or not, can easily lead to bad credit.

I am very cautious when providing my personal information (social security number, credit card info, address, etc.) especially in social networking communities over the internet such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace etc.  Also, make sure there are no mistakes on your credit report and check to ensure someone else’s credit information is not mixed up with yours.  This meant I needed credit monitoring and identity protection.

I use SmartCredit.com and it shows me my credit in a easy to understand way.  It gives me action buttons to take care of any issue I may have, directly with my creditors.  It also gives me great credit and identity protection with a mobile rapid response feature.   I loved it so much I got a job with SmartCredit.com

If you are young and just starting out, do what I did.  Start slow, paying accounts on-time and demonstrate you are responsible with credit and can be trusted to pay your obligations back timely.

Darren Partch – Vice President of Business Development for Smartcredit.com

Categorised in: Credit Monitoring, Credit Report, Credit Score, Getting Credit, Identity Theft, Money & Identity, Uncategorized

This post was written by David B. Coulter