Three Ways Credit Report Monitoring Benefits You Credit report monitoring involves using a service that lets you keep tabs on what is going on with your credit. You can see how your report is changing and how your credit score is changing. This helps to empower you financially, helps you to protect your identity and provides many advantages. Some of the top advantages of credit report monitoring include the following. Credit Report Monitoring Helps You Understand Your Finances Whenever you take on any kind of debt, the debt shows up on your credit report. Your credit report, therefore, gives you a snapshot summary of all of the debts that you have. This includes your mortgage balance and the balances on any credit cards and other loans you may have in your name. You’ll also see how much credit you have available to you on your open credit cards. Seeing all of this information at once lets you know what you owe and helps give you a picture of your financial obligations. Credit Report Monitoring Helps You Catch Mistakes Credit card companies and banks aren’t perfect and sometimes they make mistakes. In some instances, they may report that a payment was made late when it wasn’t or they may provide an incorrect loan balance. Sometimes, creditors will even mistake you for someone else and will put information on your credit report that doesn’t apply to you. Credit monitoring lets you see these errors so you can then contact the credit reporting agencies and correct them. Credit Report Monitoring Can Help Alert You to ID Theft Identity theft is one of the biggest financial problems that many people can face because it can do so much damage to their credit through no fault of their own. When your identity is stolen, someone can use your personal data in order to apply for credit cards and other loans or to take advantage of the use of services. The thief then will not pay for the debt they’ve taken on and you may find a record of maxed out credit cards, bills that haven’t been paid and judgments against you when credit card companies sue you for nonpayment. All of these things can completely destroy your credit score and can leave you with ruined credit. Although you can get the information removed and undo the damage that has been done, the process isn’t easy and it can take a lot of time. Credit report monitoring helps you to catch the ID theft early so that you can stop the thief before a lot of damage is done. If you are interested in credit report monitoring, you can use a service such as CreditProtect® or IDENTITY GUARD® to help you keep tabs on your credit.