A couple weeks ago Mrs. InACents received a call from the local authorities stating her debit card information had been stolen. Apparently when we ordered pizza from a local establishment several months ago, the pizza boy decided to lift the card information. The good news was it did not appear he ever used the card information to make a purchase. The bad news is that the card had to be cancelled and a new one ordered. We are also in the midst of finding new tenants for our rental home, and are reminded just how bad a lot of peoples credit is. So this is a good point in life to remind everyone of the basics of debt and credit cards and how it impacts you.

The use of debit cards come with inherent risks due to the nature of them being linked directly to your bank account. A thief with your debit card information can easily manage to drain the account of funds, while leaving you penniless. The advantage of using a credit card over a debit card is the built-in consumer protections.

In general, credit card companies are a lot easier at not holding you accountable for false charges. A credit card company will typically credit you the charge while being investigated. However, banks tend to go through a lot tougher review process to get your money back, which could take months, causing you to be without your cash until the complaint is completed.

That is my number two reason for always using a credit card to make a purchase, especially at riskier retailers like mom and pops restaurants or even vendors at a flea market (yes Mrs. InACents has been known to pull out the plastic with certain vendors). My number one reason for always using a credit card is for the rewards, but of course. Why would I want to use a debit card, that comes with more risk, and I do not get any rewards out of it? I would rather use my money in my bank account to pay off the balance each month.

What else can be done to protect us from debit card fraud?

Once my wife alerted me of the breach, and she was off correcting things with her bank, I immediately pulled our credit reports from annualcreditreport.com. The consumer needs to be careful where they go to get their “free” credit report. Type in free credit report to a search engine, and you will immediately see unlimited options offering to give you access to your report. However, see that little asterisk? The secret these companies hide in the small print is they want you to sign up for a subscription based service to monitor your credit, and as a result, you will be able to get access to your credit file, and possibly even scores.

The simple fact is, I do not think that level of monitoring is required. If you are the type that likes to check your report a lot, or wants a company to professional lock down your account from intruders, than maybe credit monitoring is for you. In my opinion, the free annual credit report is adequate enough for our family.

There are three credit bureaus that report your credit and have their own models for calculating your score, TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian. Once per year (every 366 days, not calendar year) you are allowed to see a copy of your credit report for free from each of the bureaus by visiting annualcreditreport.com. There are some exceptions to the rule of one report per year, the most notable being is cases where you are turned down for credit, where you then are allowed to see a copy of your report to understand why credit was not granted.

Typically, I like to space our free annual credit reports out once every four months. For example, since I pulled our TransUnion reports now, I will likely pull either Experian or Equifax around July, with the remaining pull around November. This allows me to monitor all of our accounts throughout the year to watch for unscrupulous activity and to make sure there are no reporting errors. If I were to pull all of our reports at once, I would have to wait until the next year, or purchase the reports anytime any sketchy came up.

Since I knew we had recent inquiries from Barclays for opening up US Airways credit cards (Wife/Me), I also knew they would more than likely pulled our credit report from TransUnion; therefore, I decided to pull that report to look for any errors or wrongly opened accounts by our new pizza guy friend.

Why did I only pull our TransUnion reports?

While I did want to see our inquiries on our accounts, the key for me was to see what accounts were currently open and active, to make sure Mr. Pizza did not open any cards without us knowing. I think opening up a new credit card would be really difficult if not impossible to do with just our credit card information, but you never know what loops the villains may take to open new accounts.

When you open a new account, whether it be a credit card, mortgage, or auto loan, to name a few, the issuing bank will pull a copy of your credit report, as well as start reporting your payment history. In most cases, only one of the three credit bureaus will get pulled to check your credit worthiness (called a hard or soft inquiry); however, once the account is opened, your payment history will be reported to all three bureaus.

A hard inquiry is performed when you are looking to open a new line of credit. The issuing bank will pull your credit report and review the file to make sure they want to work with you. A hard inquiry is indicated as such in your credit file, and will remain there for two years.

Hard inquires will immediately lower your credit score by approximately 5 points, but will bounce back after 6 months. This is why when you start to open a lot of credit cards to earn free rewards, issuers will sometimes say you have too many inquiries within a short period of time. The reason is because it can look like you are financially strapped and need a lot of credit, thus becoming riskier to the bank.

A soft inquiry is often pulled by an issuer to see if you pre-qualify for an offer. You know all of those junk mail offers for credit cards? They are often the result of a soft inquiry by the bank. Here is the good news! Soft inquiries do not impact your credit scores. The somewhat creepy thing is you do not even know they occur.

So for example, our Barclays’ issued US Airways cards were all completed through our TransUnion reports. Therefore, you will not see any mention of an inquiry on our Experian or Equifax reports. However, there are instances where issuers will pull from multiple bureaus.

In general, you want to minimize the amount of hard inquiries on your account, at least all at once. Those that open a lot of credit cards like to possibly open 3-5 cards at the same time, so that all the hard inquiries hit at the same time, and as a result, the card issuers do not see all the inquiries. The typical rule is that approximately every 90 days is a good period to apply for new credit when opening up a lot of cards. We tend to be a lot more conservative in our household, opening up only a handful of new cards per year. So really, our inquiries never come into question because they are so far and few between. With proper timing, and with hard inquiries falling off your credit report every two years, one can utilize their credit towards endless rewards, but it takes careful management and always paying off your bill in full and on-time each month.

What did I learn from reviewing our credit reports?

My wife has always been pretty good with managing her finances before meeting me. Unfortunately, now I pretty much manage all the money management aspect, although we review it together quite often. Before my wife met me, there were a credit card account that unfortunately had a couple of late payments.

In May 2006 (right after I first started dating my wife), she was more than 30 days late on payment. Then in August, the same account went 30 days past due, and then 60 days past due in September. Ouch. There was also another 30 day late payment in January 2007. I found all of this out years ago when I first started managing my wife’s accounts. So we immediately made a concerted effort to make sure it never happens again.

Why I bring this up is that after 7 years, reporting of an account falls off your report. Therefore, I am excited to know that by the end of September of this year, 3 of the 4 late payments will fall off Mrs. InACents report.

Keep in mind my wife’s credit scores overall are really pretty great. While I typically score in the 780-800+ range, she routinely scores in the 750-780 range. The above delinquencies are the only negative marks on her account, which I am excited will fall off in a matter of months. This means we should see a substantial credit score increase towards the end of this year. All of our hard work will pay off!

We were very fortunate that we took so many other measures to build a strong credit profile for Mrs. InACents, so that when we purchased our dream home in 2010, we had no credit issues, and even when purchasing our new van a couple months ago, there were no issues.

As for hard inquiry analysis on both our accounts, my wife had eight (8) in the past two (2) years, while I only had six (6). In all fairness, we put the new van in my wife’s name, so four (4) of the hard inquiries were all related to financing the car when applying for loans across various banks. Both of our oldest hard inquiries were related to our home purchase in mid-2011.

After financing the home, it is fairly typical for the bank to pull your credit report afterwards, which happened for us several months later. Therefore, by August of this year, we should both see a couple of our inquiries fall off.

Overall, I am happy with what we found within our reports, and will continue down our path towards correct credit management.

Is there something you still do not understand about your credit? Ask us in the comments below, and we will look to answer them for you.

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Source: InACents