Week 1, Step 1

Okay, when you had a job, you had a routine. The alarm clock sounded off, you hit the snooze button. Eventually you get out of (fall to the floor) bed. Next (nobody ever wants to admit this) but you stumble to the bathroom tripping over the dog.

Then your daily routine starts. Some of us start the coffee, some of us wake up family members, some of us hit the shower, and so forth. You finish your routine and hop into the car/truck and somehow you find yourself at work with absolutely no recall how you arrived (either the caffeine hasn't gotten to your brain or the vehicle has an autopilot function you did not know about.

You hop out of your vehicle, spilling coffee down the front of you and dropping your purse or briefcase as a gust of wind blows your stuff across the parking lot. You enter the workplace through the employee entrance and start working - hey you don't need the boss hanging over you to tell you what to do - you know what to do.

But, one day, the routine changes....Human Resources tells you that you are being laid off...your routine was just screwed up!

The next day, the alarm goes off, you hit snooze, you hit snooze, you hit snooze then rip the cord off the phone hurling it across the room. You couldn't sleep last night. You want to stay in bed - hey you don't have to go into the office! You finally get up but don't want to eat. You don't want to shower. You don't want to get dressed. You don't want to visit anyone.

Hmmmm....what do you do when you don't have a job to go to? I know I sat around the house looking for stuff to do and finally called my mom to ask her "what did you exactly do" when you were a stay-at-home mom? After receiving "thanks allot" and "you gotta be kidding me!" statements my mom delivered a litany about the things she did.

Well...I don't know about you, but I am not going to start sewing....not going to start baking bread or making spectacular dinners....not going to start ironing (hey what's an iron) the pillowcases and sheets....not going to start going to start going to PTA because my dogs are not enrolled in school.

This may not be your scenario, however you most likely are in zombie land so, you need PLAN YOUR WORK & WORK YOUR PLAN!

Where to begin?????


STEP ONE

Contact the credit card companies to get your credit report. You need to review what's in each FREE credit report (there are three credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian and Trans Union - links listed on this blog site and all allow you a free report or you can visit Annual Credit Report dot com). Check the following information.

1. Your personal information - is your name, address, phone, birthday, etc. correct. 80% of the credit reports have errors (now a 20% accuracy rate is something worth getting fired for - go figure!.
2. Check who the reports indicate are your lenders. If you don't recognize an account, you need to address this. Check to see the payments are correctly noted. Your creditors information should reflect the past 7 years of dealings - nothing more. If more than the past 7 years are showing, you need to have this corrected.
3. Only information pertaining to your finances/money should be listed - no arrest records, nothing except money related information.
4. Check to see who has accessed your credit reports. If you try to open a charge card, take out a loan, etc., that information will be noted on your credit report (hard inquiries). However the people mailing junk mail to you may have accessed your credit history and/or bought your name from the credit bureau. This too will be reflected in your credit history and often negatively impacts your credit score. If this is happening, you may want to contact the credit bureau(s) to have a security lock placed on your report thus preventing solicitors from accessing your history and impacting your scores.