Keep Your Credit Out of the Depths

Oregon may be the perfect state to live in. Through it runs the Cascade mountain range, with its own share of dormant volcanoes, including Crater Lake, which occupies the caldera where the peak of Mount Mazama used to be. And it has the ocean, with excellent scenic driving along the Pacific Coast Highway. All of this beauty, plus great schools and cultural events, make it the kind of place you don’t want spoiled because you haven’t kept track of your Oregon credit report and have let your increasingly poor credit drop you into a pit deeper even than Crater Lake and with about as good a chance of survival.

Credit is About More Than Money

In Oregon and every other state, your credit score increasingly impacts far more than just your financial life. While it is crucial to whether you will get approved for mortgage, auto and personal loans, as well as what the interest rates and repayment terms will be, it can also influence things as seemingly unrelated as whether you can get a job or not. While it may seem counterintuitive, as well as a little unfair, that your credit score may keep you from getting a job that has nothing to do with handling money, the fact of the matter is that it does. Employers can afford to be picky about who they hire in this market and may interpret a low credit score as a sign of poor judgment or decision-making skills.

You Can Look at Your Report for Free

Through the government website AnnualCreditReport.com, you can receive, for free, one copy of your credit report from each of the three major crediting reporting agencies a year. This makes it fairly easy to keep track of your score and can be done in two different ways. Once a year you can look at all three, or three times a year you can request a different one. Once you get in the habit of checking your Oregon credit report to make sure you stand where you think you do, you will figure out what system works best for your needs.

Once you know what your credit score is, you can determine what you need to do about it. If your score is good and your income solid, your bills readily paid, etc., then you don’t need to do anything. If this is not the case, then this knowledge can give you the ability to determine the steps you need to take to improve your score and concomitantly, your potential.