Your cellphone bill may now be another source of credit
Mar. 3–In what is becoming a common practice among companies that issue monthly bills, Verizon has begun to furnish customer payment history, good or bad, to credit reporting agencies.
Read the entire story.
From a strictly financial perspective–not privacy, etc–this is good for people who pay on time, but bad for those who don’t. By the way, when I teach my 1-hour class, I ask people who don’t have a credit card why they don’t. One of the most common answers is “I might forget to pay my bill.”
Every credit card (and almost every bill, like your cellphone) now has AutoPay. Make it easy on yourself!
Update: Joe writes: “Well, you need to be careful with auto-pay. For example, I’d never do auto-pay with Comcast because they’ve overcharged me several times. And once that money’s been paid to them it’s that much harder to get back.” He’s right. I should have written this in the original post. ALWAYS check your statement before it gets paid, through AutoPay or anything else.
