Black History Month Ends With Aha!

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This is a guest post from a prolific blogger and my dearest personal friend Kissie. Her blog is Still Kissie you can also follow her on Twitter.

Author Carter G. Woodson stated the importance of remembering our past in The Journal of Negro History. “If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated,” he said.

The month of February now represents Woodson’s movement with Black History Month, which started as Negro History Week, as an opportunity to represent the achievements of blacks from the past to the present day and implement them into our nation’s history.

And on that note, 28 days!!! Ugh! (Time flies!) (Can’t disappoint – must write post quickly….that was my mantra all month.)

It began with a stir this year, yes. It’s ending with relief and an aha.

Credit Scores Gone Wild – 6 Reasons To Revamp The Credit Scoring System

It’s always been said that if you have good credit you’ll be offered lower interest rates because you’re considered a low credit risk. As a result, over the years many of us have spent countless hours and exorbitant fees trying to repair our credit reports. Last year we were hit by this current financial crisis and, in-turn the credit card companies began raising interest rates, even for those of us that were previously considered low risk. The logical conclusion here is that banks can raise your rates whenever they want; your pristine credit rating ain’t worth diddly.

My question to you is, why do we need those credit reporting agencies anyway? Oh yeah, that would be: Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian. Let’s review a few points:

1. The 3 agencies spew out different – often conflicting information on your report
2. One out of the 3 has to be more accurate than the other 2
3. Very often we end up with wrong information appearing on our reports that we need to have “fixed“
4. It’s no secret that these 3 agencies are flawed, (isn’t that the reason we have 3 in the first place) so let’s “fix’ them and the methods they use to collect the data
5. If we need to rely on credit reporting agencies can’t we have just one that is accurate at least 90 – 95% of the time? Come on people this is American right?
6. Bottom line – what’s the difference when it seems the lending institutions can basically charge whatever interest rate they want whenever they get ready to anyway??

Credit Basis

I know that there is someone reading this thinking that I’m out of my league and I don’t know how devastating it would be to change the current system. If you happen to be that person, I say to you, the next time you get your free annual credit report, and if you find no erroneous, outdated or just plain old wrong data on all 3 of them, watch out your interest rates are about to go up!

EXAMPLE: On September 1, 2009 Michael Jackson’s credit scores were reported by TMZ as 592, 575 and 524. (R.I.P. King of Pop)