Protect yo shizzle....

Having been a victim of identity theft back in 2000, I can tell you that taking every precaution to protect your identity is more than worth it. I shred anything and everything with my name on it, credit card offers, statements, and other misc things I throw away around the home. It doesn't take that much time....you never know who might be dumpster diving through your trash! I also pay for credit monitoring (of all 3) and get alerts every time a hard or soft hit posts to my credit report, as well as monthly updates to my score. Think it's a bit much? Let me give you two examples of why it is worth it.

Example 1: Recently I was on the phone with a mortgage lender, just checking out rates and looking to see if a possible Re-Fi would be worth it. I got a hit the next day, this douchebag had pulled my credit report! I called back and asked when did I ever authorize him to pull my credit? He babbled about standard procedures and some other crap, he knew he was wrong. Although he did have some of my personal information, I never once authorized him to pull my credit, and that pissed me off.

Example 2: Like I said, I was a victim of identity theft. While stationed in Germany, someone got ahold of my info and ran up two phone bills (over $2000) in California! The addresses they used were bogus, and the accounts went into collection. You'd think that, me being the victim, the creditors would be sympathetic...NO. I had every possible explanation, orders showing I was in Germany, no affiliation to the addresses in California, letters from my Commander, and do you know what they wanted after all that: "Ok Sir, so how would you like to pay this debt?" They are ruthless, they don't care, and the dispute process is loooooooooong and drawn out. It took me almost 6 years to get that cleared up, and that was finally after emailing the CEO of the phone company.

Bottom line, being proactive is much better than being reactive. The $13 I pay per month to monitor my credit and time spent shredding docs is very much worth it.