cleaning up credit reports

Two days ago at Kenya's house I had vegetarian meatloaf, cabbage, couscous, and cake with tangerine mango juice. I love her home-cooked meals! All week I eat cold store-bought food (like cereal and fruit cups) or fast food.

I'm participating in Budgetnista's Live Richer Challenge (Kenya introduced me to it). Sign up here.

Every day the Budgetnista talks about a new task to do to improve your finances. I have not found it very helpful because I started this journey about 18 months ago and have done everything she is suggested to do already. However, this week she focuses on improving your credit.

Dave Ramsey doesn't focus on credit building since that's a resource used by people who plan to be in debt (I know some people need it for jobs, too, but most of us don't). Some people need it for renting an apartment, but my poor credit scores (less than 620) have not kept me from renting in the past. So, I haven't been concerned about my credit score.

But, just to humor Budgnetista, I decided to go ahead and order my credit reports and work on cleaning them up.

I get my credit scores through the Discover It Card because Discover updates my credit score every 3 months. It was 619 one year ago before I paid off the credit cards and it was 629 today. By getting rid of debt, I have improved my credit score without even trying.