How I Became My Own Consumer Credit Counseling Service And Bounced Back From My Bad Credit Nightmare (part 14)

Knowledge is power, baby, and you'll do yourself a huge favor if you don't let anything or anyone convince you otherwise, the way I did.

If there's one thing you take away from my story, take this away: no matter how widely your credit history reeks right now, you're not powerless. A little time and effort can clean up a lot of the crap that may be currently staining your credit history.

There are a lot of credit repair programs and services out there that you can spend your money on. Be careful. Some of them are just out to scam you. The ones that aren't out to scam you have value only in this respect: that they'll do for you what you can very well do for yourself, if you aren't too lazy to make the effort, like I was. Get it? It's not rocket science, you can do it yourself, all you need to do is bounce over to the library and check out a book.

But let's face it. Some people, for whatever reason, don't want to put forth the effort. Look at me - the first time I confronted my report, I was just overwhelmed and threw it aside. When I think about it now, instead of throwing it aside and doing nothing, I probably should have paid someone to do it for me. After all, some sort of action is better than no action at all. So for those who'd rather pay someone else to do the legwor, I say, fine, go for it - just do your homework, make sure you're not going to get ripped off.

But what I'm going to give you a lot of the stuff I've learned by reading books so you can do it yourself... (consumer credit counseling, to be continued)

How I Became My Own Consumer Credit Counseling Service And Bounced Back From My Bad Credit Nightmare (part 13)

The consequences were unending. It seemed that every aspect of my life was affected by my reeking credit. I was crippled financially. Today I shudder to think how much money I lost in jacked up interest rates. To say nothing of the humiliation I suffered when my lady friends figured out my predicament - and of course, they always did. If they knew me long enough, they did.

It was like trying to hide some dirty secret or something.

Shame, insomnia, regret.

Four stinkin years went by.

One day I was surfing the net and some site or other had some promotional thing going where you could get your credit report online for free. So I did. Once again, I was bewildered by it, but this time - I don't know why - I went to the library and took out a book on credit repair and read it.

Bingo.

One year later my credit report looked like a different animal... (consumer credit counseling, to be continued)