Sabrina’s Money Matters

This is the last Friday of my 27th year on earth. I’m sad. A few days ago I posted about my son turning 10 this year and how shocking it is for me. Shouldn’t be, but it is, we see birthdays go by and think nothing of it until suddenly it dawns on us that 5 are gone since the last time we noticed.

I don’t know about you, but I used to look forward to getting older, but I’m finding, I’m not so excited about aging anymore. I still believe my 30’s will be the best years of my life, but I’m not so anxious to get there now.

I still have a lot to learn. I’m a little scared of the future, but then, who isn’t? I don’t know as much as I want to know, have as much as I want to have, I haven’t traveled as much as I would’ve liked to by now.

I don’t wanna grow up. I like blaring my music too loud, drinking too much and acting a fool when I want to. In a few years, that’ll be something only 20 somethings do, and I won’t be one of them. This sucks.

I was driving in to work this morning with one of my cd’s cranked up when it occurred to me that maybe I should enjoy the air outside and turn the music down and find some inspiration for my blog post this morning.

Then my sister called. She’s due to have my nephew on the 14th, we don’t talk nearly enough and in the morning is the best time to catch me, I’m still a little friendly then .
Every time I talk to my sister I realize how much older we are getting, I’m turning 28 next week, she turned 30 last year and our baby sister is turning 21 next month.
Wow.

Age sneaks up on you, you don’t realize it’s happening until a few years have slipped away and you think, wow, it’s been 5 years since I lived there, or it’s been 10 years since I’ve graduated, or whatever the case may be. It’s surprising when you realize how much time can go by so quickly. My son enters the double digit ages this year. He’ll be 10. I won’t talk too much about this because I hate that reminiscing, “oh where has the time gone” crap. But I’ve spent all this time trying to forge our lives in this world, and have our own little corner of the world, and now we finally have it, and half his childhood is over.

The beauty of him turning 10 years old is that every person I know who talks about childhood, and recalls the year they were 10, it was a good year, you’re still in the age of innocence. You still have that charm of being too young to know anything really, but you still think you’re pretty smart, but you’re not yet to that “hate your parents because they’re stupid” phase of life. I’m dreading that phase.
So that’s what I ended up with as my inspiration, the last year of innocence.

Recalling childhood, what was your best year?

John Chow’s blog today was great timing. I need encouragement sometimes, I’m pretty cocky about my abilities on any given day, and about my status in life, and my take on the world. I’m one of those people who doesn’t really care what you think of me.
Really.
Everyone in the world thinks they had it hard growing up, those who don’t, great, but most of us that saw any strife at all think we had it pretty rough. I don’t think that how we are raised or how we saw people being treated in our past has anything to do with our future. So there’s no reason to let that bring you down to a level where you can’t accomplish things in life.

I know I have what it takes to be successful. I just have to beat the procrastination bug. And I really think that inside if we have the right motivation, we can all be successful in our own right.

I have a hard time getting motivated sometimes just like everyone else, I would rather watch a Mavericks game than work – like Sunday. I didn’t accomplish much on the site Sunday, there was a mid-day game, anyone who knows me knows that the world stops when a Maverick game is on. I’m (not) working on that. This helps.

But like John Chow’s blog today, I feel that success is personality driven, I believe you need drive and the willingness to learn everything you need to know and you seriously need to be confident. If you have no skill, or ability, soon enough you’ll know, but if you do, you gotta back it up with your attitude. Attitude is everything. We all have what it takes, we just don’t always recognize it. I’ve been a survivor for a long time, and it’s important to note, being a survivor doesn’t have to mean life is harder for you than everyone else and you walk a tougher road, it just means that you can survive what’s put before you, because you WANT to. It’s also important to note here that everyone has a choice, you’ve chosen to read this blog. You choose to go to that job everyday and do that work and listen to those people talk around you, to you. Whether you enjoy it or not, it’s a choice. In all walks of life, we find determination and tenacity brings us to the goals we so desire to see achieved.

In the end we all choose our paths, and we either embrace new things and go with the new, even be part of it or we stay in our chosen time period and ignore the possibilities.
But the question remains the same..what do you want out of this life?

A HOW TO ABOUT THE ACTUAL DISPUTE PROCESS ONLINE

To Dispute Online with Experian
You’ll need the report number from the paper report you recieved in the mail after following these steps.

Under the “Have a credit report with a report number?” heading in bold, there is a link that says click here to request a dispute online .There are four pieces of information you need to enter:

Your Report Number
Your State
Your Social Security Number
Your Zip Code
(If you’ve just moved within 60 days, enter you’re previous zip code just in case).

Then you’ll check the box that says have agreed to the terms and conditions.
Then check the box that says to certify you are disputing your own information.
Then check the option to understand the criminal mumbo jumbo.
Then click Submit.

Now for a few things you need to know before you finish, you can dispute anything that is inaccurate. ANYTHING. So if the spelling of your name is wrong, your address on the file is off by a digit, your phone number is wrong, your social has a digit off, dispute it. Some things you may only be able to dispute by mail, but do it. It’s worth it, this controls your life, your credit is pulled when you apply for a job, satellite services, or a credit card, it’s all the same these days.

You’ve never seen this kind of a guide anywhere have you? I haven’t, that’s why I’m doing it. This should be out there for you, and now it is. Now back to the matter at hand…

Then you’ll see a report summary.

It’ll give you a link to write down at the top of the page if you want to return to your credit report where you’ll select “View Your Report” for your convenience, all the links you’ll need for this are here.

The list under the summary:

Potentially negative items. Next to that you’ll see “click here” for instructions on how to dispute potentially inaccurate information.
Accounts in good standing.
Recent requests (inquiries) for your credit history.
Personal Information.
Important message from Experian.

Contact link.
Consumer rights link.

If there are items you want to dispute, click on:

Potentially negative items

Find the item you would like to dispute and click on the heading.

You’ll get a summary of that particular file, and an orange buttom that says “Dispute this item”, click on that.
You’ll see the heading that says “I believe that this item is inaccurate because:”
and a dropdown menu box:

Options:

-Payment Never Late
-No knowledge of account
-Account Paid in Full
-Account Closed
-Unauthorized charges
-Belongs to ex-spouse
-Balance Incorrect
-Included in bankruptcy
-Belongs to primary account holder
-Corporate Account
-’Associated With’ Name Incorrect
-Other Reason
-Delete your Statement

Below the menu box is a dialogue box where you enter important details pertaining to your dispute. Once you’re finished with that you click “submit your dispute”.

Click “Yes, Submit my dispute”.

Enter your email address if you want to be notified when the dispute is resolved.

Then click “Yes”.

You’ll be back to the page listing “Potentially Negative Items”.

What you disputed will have an exclamation point above it that states beside it “This item is currently being investigated”.

Then repeat if there are other things on your report you want to dispute.