Your credit report and credit score are so important that you must check your credit score right now if you have not done so in the past six months. The majority of credit reports contain errors and errors cost you lots of money. A credit report error easily leads to a lower credit score and the lower your score the more you'll pay for things like insurance, mortgages, car loans, credit cards, etc.

Take a few minutes right now to look over your consolidated credit report. I am a huge fan of consolidated credit reports. A consolidated credit report allows you to see all three major credit bureau reports in an easy to read, side-by-side format. It makes it extremely easy to compare what the different credit bureaus are reporting about you and spot errors. That makes the consolidated credit report worth four times the price of the report.

While it is now possible to get a free copy of your credit report from the bureaus it is just not easy to do. The reports will arrive at some point in the future and at different times, they will be in different formats and by the time they all arrive you may have already moved on to something else in your life. Pay for the consolidated credit report, get it online right now and let's move forward.

Step 2: Reducing Communication Costs

There are a couple of major areas of your monthly expenses that are real easy to save on without changing your lifestyle. In a very few minutes you may be able to save more than $100 a month or more.

I hate local telephone bills. Most people pay way to much for phone service or have loads of extras they rarely use but pay through the nose for each month. Your phone company may call the plan "The Works" but I call it "The Shaft."

I changed my phone service to a broadband service and was able to slash my telephone bills by more than 50% while getting loads of extra features. I have a separate business account with them and get a free fax line, you can too.

Cell phone service is a huge money drain. If you are not using your cell phone that often you are paying way too much every month for basic service unless you are using a pre-paid cell phone.

A pre-paid cell phone makes absolute commonsense if you make limited calls or if you have a teenager at home. If you make limited calls you may be paying as much as $50 a month for your cell phone plan. If you are using a pre-paid cell phone plan you pay $0 per month. A quick yearly savings of $600.

I also love pre-paid cell phone plans if you have a teenager. A regular cell phone is like a blank check. I've had clients that have had children run up cell bills of over $1,000 a month because they were not aware of how many minutes they were using. That makes a regular cell phone like an unlimited credit card.

By using a pre-paid cell phone you can establish limits on how much you are willing to pay each month. Your child can even easily purchase additional minutes if they want to to talk more. The pre-paid cell phone contains costs while giving your child a phone.

While you are at it, make sure you have the best plan for your cell phone. Here is a super easy way to see if there are better cell deals available. It practically takes a Doctorate degree to understand a cell phone bill. They don't make it easy. I have worked with so many clients that were using the wrong plan for their usage that this is the first step I always ask people to look at.

Don't be intimidated about looking if your current plan has an early termination charge. I've just seen too many cases where it was cheaper in the long run for people to pay the termination charge and switch rather than continue to pay through the nose for the wrong plan.