photo credit: tompagenet

Part of keeping your financial house in order is preventive maintenance / nipping things in the bud.  Small issues, left unchecked, can turn into big problems.  Case in point,  I spoke with an acquaintance over the weekend who wanted to pay me to ‘fix’ his credit.  Of course I declined because there’s no need to pay anyone to fix your credit.  There’s only so much ‘fixing’ that can be done and you can do that yourself, for free.

That said, I asked him what the problem was.  He let a number of small bills (under $100) go to collections.  They were all medical bills.  When I asked how the accounts went to collections, he stated that the insurance company had notified him that they didn’t cover the full cost of the procedures but he simply ignored all those notifications.  He felt the insurance company was in the wrong and should have covered the total costs.  However, he never bothered to communicate that to them or make arrangements with the doctor’s office.

As a result of failing to make a few phone calls, now he has several collection accounts on his credit report.  So now, his credit score has dropped and it’s going to take more than a few calls to get the issue resolved.   He’s found himself in a predicament that could have been very easily avoided.  Simply put, he let a molehill turn into a mountain.