Financial Fitness with Alan Akina - Don't be a Fool

25 Nov 2013 · 2 min

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This content was created by Alan Akina. This content was uploaded by Alan Akina. This is a YouTube clip titled "Financial Fitness with Alan Akina - Don't be a Fool" (created 2013-11-25). It's a short Wake Up Today segment where an announcer introduces Alan Akina, who delivers five spring-cleaning tips to improve your credit report: obtain your free credit reports, check scores via Credit Karma or Credit Sesame, verify personal information, look for discrepancies (unauthorized accounts or old negatives), and dispute errors with the credit bureaus per FTC guidance. The excerpt includes an introduction, Alan's financial tip segment, and a brief sign-off/thank you.

All right, well, it is April 1st, which means it could be April Fool's Day for some of you, but don't be a fool when it comes to your money. Alan Akina has today's financial fitness.
Good morning, gang. For today's tip, we are still going to focus on spring cleaning for our financial house. So here are 5 steps to get your credit sparkling clean. Tip number 1, start with getting a copy of your credit report. Now you can get a free report from each of the 3 major credit bureaus by going to annualcreditreport.com. Check your credit score. Now I like to use either of these 2 websites: creditkarma.com, which gives you a free score from TransUnion, or creditsesame.com, which uses Experian. Now that you have your report in hand, check for any errors on your personal information section. Things to look for is correct spelling of your name, Your Social Security number, address, employer, and even previous employers. Now, the number one thing here is to make sure that this is you and not someone else. Number 4, look for any discrepancies. For example, a credit card that does not belong to you, or a collection, or even negative information that should have been removed after 7 years. And number 5, dispute all errors and mistakes, folks. According to the FTC, you should contact the credit reporting agency and the information provider. Now, each agency has procedures to handle this that can be found on their website. For Wake Up Today, I'm Alan Akina. See you on Wednesday.
Thank you, Alan. Appreciate that.