What to know when repairing your credit score (and why we need to stand up against special-interest attacks on the CFPB)

From fraudulent account creation to payday lending, consumers face predatory financial practices from all too many sources. And all too often, credit repair companies take advantage of anxious consumers trying to get their financial lives on track following hits to their credit history. In a world full of these predatory practices, it’s crucial for consumers to know their rights.

The most important thing for consumers to know is that they do not have to pay anyone to help correct inaccurate information on their accounts. Consumers can take the reins on their financial future through two simple steps:

1. Check credit reports carefully. Every American is entitled by law to a free, annual credit report, which can be found at www.annualcreditreport.com.

2. Write to financial institutions or credit reporting companies disputing any wrong information, inaccuracies or errors using these sample letters, instructions and templates from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

Institutions like the CFPB are consumers’ watchdog — essential to helping correct these types of errors. But right now, the CFPB is under attack in Congress, with politicians pushing to strip its funding and gut its power to stand up for consumers. Special interests are already gearing up to try to push these changes through by tacking them onto must-pass spending bills before the end of the year. In the next few months, it will be more critical than ever for us to stand up for the CFPB.

The CFPB was created following the financial crisis because, before its existence, there had been no federal agency whose sole job was to look out for consumers’ financial interests. In its first five years alone, it’s returned more than $11 billion in relief to more than 27 million harmed consumers. And that only counts the money that was returned to consumers after wrongdoing — who knows how many countless billions more consumers have saved because of advice like this from the CFPB, or because financial institutions refrained from predatory practices knowing that the CFPB was on the beat?

Standing up for consumers’ credit scores is just one more reason that we need a fully-empowered CFPB working on our behalf. This upcoming holiday season, let’s make sure that we stand strong against special-interest schemes to gut the CFPB. Our credit reports, and our pocketbooks, will thank us later.