$ Strategies: the Keep

I plug every hole I see but sometimes there are holes I cannot; so, I take the extreme measure of building a credit-keep: an impenetrable fortress of security, buried deep in my fortified city.

Credit-rating agencies are the keepers of the rivers of commerce; credit flows. By default, our credit is open. With the right information, signatures, verifications, and paperwork credit lines are established through these three agencies. What does Identity Theft really mean? Money. I define Identity Theft as the moment someone has convinced these agencies that they are me. If someone is slick enough to slide the right information past the right sentinels of commerce, these agencies will have no choice but to accept the debt on our behalf. The trick is to dismiss the guards and close the gate.

And there are many guards, many for-profit companies eager to provide the monitoring necessary to protect your open credit. For a monthly fee, they will scan the universe for intruders. But is this money well-spent? In a word, 'no.' You will pay these agencies to protect you from something that you can do much better for yourself at a minimal cost with a maximum benefit. For anyone willing to put a little effort into their financial health, credit-monitoring is a scam. How? Simple: a credit-lock.

Let me say that this solution is not for everyone, all of the time. That said, this solution is for anyone willing to fortify their credit. But it requires work and discipline. You must open and close your credit with planning and intention. It also costs money, not much but some. It's easy to use, and secures us against the greatest risk: unknown, unauthorized credit lines. The process is relatively simple. You sign up at each of the agencies. You request a lock on your credit, pay the fee, and create a password. Then, when you want to open your credit for some perspective creditor to view, you create a temporary lift of the lock and pay that same fee again. This means that if you want to open a new credit-card, buy a house, or a car, you will have to plan for it.

Although it takes effort, a credit-lock insures our exposure is vastly limited. Having to intentionally use our credit means we considered new lines more closely. I highly recommend it. Then again, if new lines of credit is critical to your long-term business strategy, maybe this isn't for you. In that case, you could do worse than to pay the right people to monitor your credit. But come on, if you're wealthy enough to be opening and closing accounts regularly, you've got people whose sole job is to take care of that. The effort it takes to live with a credit-lock is how the rest of us remain bulletproof.