If you've been bankrupt and are trying to rebuild your credit, it will help to keep track of your progress as you add more good information to your credit report. And a credit monitoring service is one way to keep track of your progress.
You already know how hard it is to get your credit score back up after going bankrupt. At this point, you know that you need to be extra careful with your credit score or else you could be the next person whose identity is stolen. You don't want it to happen, even if you're not bankrupt. But now that you've gone bankrupt, having your identity stolen will hurt your efforts to rebuild your credit more than anything else.
Even though you can do the monitoring yourself, using a credit monitoring service can help you rebuild your credit and get over bankruptcy.
Here are some reasons why.
- Credit monitoring services usually keep track of when and why anyone looks at your credit report. This helps you find out if someone else is using your name to do something wrong.
- Services that check your credit check to see if your credit card limit has been raised. Thieves can also ask for a credit limit increase and use your card to make more purchases. If you can't pay it back on time, you could end up with a lot of debt and a lower credit score.
- Credit monitoring services also check to see if anyone opens new accounts in your name. Identity thieves can use your name, address, and Social Security number to open new accounts in your name, charge up those accounts, and leave you with more debt. This is one way they use your information to hurt you. This late payment will show up on your credit report, which will hurt your score even more. But if you keep a close eye on your credit file and know when someone opens a new account in your name, you can protect yourself from further damage caused by ID theft.
- Services that check your credit check to see if your mailing address has been changed on your credit card account. Identity thieves can change your mailing address and have your statement sent to the new address so they can get more of your financial information, like your credit card numbers, and make charges on your account. Since the bills are sent to the new address, it will be a long time before you find out. With a credit monitoring service, you can keep track of whether or not your mailing address has changed.
- Credit monitoring services are very helpful because you can get your credit report with just a click of the mouse instead of having to check it yourself. This saves you time, especially if you choose to have their daily email alerts sent to your inbox whenever something changes on your credit report. This will make it easier for you to see if any wrong information is being added so you can fix it right away, which can help your credit score.
So, you can see that if you have gone bankrupt and are trying to rebuild your credit, using a credit monitoring service can help you in many ways. Just look at what they have to offer and pick the one that works best for you.