Bonding with my credit report

Right now I'm in the middle of reading Suze Orman's new book, "Women & Money," which won Oprah's endorsement and crashed her Web site server because the book was offered free online for download. That's good enough of a recommendation for me.

I did not go the download route, primarly because my computer would start smoking from the size of the file or it would take two days to download. Anyhow, the book, much like Cathie Black's book, was another good reading choice by my dad and a nice little present in the mail. I have no idea how he heard about it, but it's definitely been thought provoking.

The book stressed that women should have a copy of their credit report and know their credit score. Sadly, I have been very lazy in taking care of this, even though I know a woman at work who had her identity stolen. So while I was home sick for several days about two weeks ago, I went to a Web site Suze recommended in her book and requested copies of my credit report. Yay, another step toward being a full adult! So now my credit reports are rolling it and so far so good. Of course I have to go back to buy the credit score, which was not clear when I ordered it, but baby steps. That is on the "to do" list for later this week.

Reading the reports are pretty easy, but it's more interesting to see what's on there, specifically bad decisions from 1999 and 2000 of opening store credit cards to save that 20 percent on shirts or pants that I don't wear anymore. Ah memories.

Now tonight I will be going through credit report #2 to make sure there are still no surprises and closing store credit cards that were bad impulse decisions.