I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the Christmas in July trend has been hitting some of the big chain retail stores. You’ll find holiday decorations up and pictures of Santa in a swimsuit. The idea is to get the consumer to start thinking about and buying for the upcoming holiday season, which is 5 ½ months away. Stores are holding special online sales of decorations and toys stores are sending out circulars with what could be the hot toys for the upcoming holiday season.

Some experts think this increased marketing of Christmas in July will actually back fire on the retailers by hurting back to school sales and leaving stores emptier in December.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for early preparations, but instead of doing your holiday shopping now, you might want to consider starting your holiday saving now. There are 18 weeks until the day after Thanksgiving, the traditional start of the holiday shopping season. If you start saving $10 a week, you’ll have $180 set aside when the big shopping day comes around. If you can double that, you’ll have $360.

If you’re a procrastinator and don’t start shopping until the week of Christmas, saving $10 a week starting now will net you $220 by the time you hit the sales. You’ll have $440 if you can set aside $20 a week.

The store ads are tempting. It sounds like a great idea to get ahead of the holiday shopping game, but don’t get ahead at the expense of your budget. It might be too early to start shopping, but it’s never too early to start saving.

There are three credit bureaus, Experian, Equifax and TransUnion.  The best place to get your credit report from all three bureaus is through www.annualcreditreport.com.  This site will allow you to check your credit reports for free.

Make sure all of the information in your credit reports is accurate.  In addition to your personal information, look at all of your credit accounts to ensure they all belong to you and that the reported payment history is correct.  If you notice any mistakes, you can file a correction with the credit bureau right from the web site.

You are entitled to a free copy of your credit report from each of the three bureaus once every 12 months.  If you’ve never checked your credit report, or it’s been a very long time, review all three reports.  Once 12 months has passed, you can create your own credit monitoring service of sorts.  Get one report.  Then wait several months and get your report from another bureau.  Wait a few more months to get your report from the third bureau.  After a few more months you’ll be eligible to receive a free credit report from the first bureau you started with.  If you continue to do this, you can always keep an eye on your credit.

Remember that your credit score is not included in your free credit report.  You will have the option to buy your score, though if you’re not planning on making a big purchase in the near future, you don’t really need to buy your credit score.

The average late fee is $39.  If you’re incurring late fees every month, that can add up to well over $400 in a year.

What can you do?  The obvious answer is, “Don’t pay late.”  And really that is the best advice, but here are some ideas to help you do that.

If you have been a long-time customer and have a positive credit history with the credit card company (meaning you always make your payments on time and this really was a one-time slip up), call your creditor and ask if they will waive the late fee.  Your creditor is under no obligation to waive the fee, but many creditors will do this for good customers.

Set up your payments to be automatically drafted from your checking each month.  If you’re someone who gets busy and just forgets about due dates, this is the easiest way to alleviate the problem.  If you do choose to have payments automatically withdrawn from your account, make very sure you have enough money in your checking to cover the payments on their due dates.  You don’t want to replace late fees with equally expensive overdraft fees.

If you’re not comfortable with doing automatic withdrawals, create a calendar and mark the due dates for your various bills.  If you have a phone that will alert you to events and important dates, set your phone up to remind you about due dates at least a week prior.

If you’re struggling to pay your bills and you need help, call the certified credit counselors at Advantage Credit Counseling Service.  We can help you create a budget and come up with a plan to manage your debt.

What questions do you have regarding debt, credit counseling, bankruptcy, and housing issues?  Do you have specific questions about managing your home budget?  Do you want to know more about shopping on a budget?

Please use the “Comments” section to ask questions or let us know what topics you would like us to write more about.  Your feedback is very important to us.

According to a recent article in The Washington Post, the reason is that this particular age group doesn’t protect themselves enough, nor do they detect when something is wrong soon enough.  The millennials simply aren’t careful enough with their sensitive information, and they are not paying enough attention to their financial records to know right away when something is wrong.

The article says, “It takes young people an average of 132 days to detect fraudulent activity on their credit cards, bank accounts and other personal holdings, and those in older age groups average 49 days, the survey shows.  When their identities are stolen, millennials are victimized by thieves for an average of about give months.”

Five months?!?  That’s a long time to have someone posing as you and stealing from you.

The survey also showed that over half of the victims never figure out how their information was stolen.

This is a good lesson for all of us, regardless of age.  We have to be careful about protecting our personal information. 

• Do not share personal information with anyone. 
• Don’t ever respond to e-mails requesting your private information.  Many thieves use what is known as “phishing” to get access to people’s personal information.
• If you are using a wireless internet connection, make sure it secured.  Identity thieves can actually “look” into your computer if you have an unsecured connection and steal your information.
• When making purchases online, make certain you are using a secured site and avoid using public computers.
• Check your bank and credit card statements on a regular basis, especially your bank statement.  This is easy to do now that most banks and creditors offer online statements.
• Check your credit report on a regular basis and look for any unauthorized activity.