Credit is an interesting game but extremely important and serious at the same time because it limits your access to funds.

Some important truths about credit:

You can only get it if you don’t need it.

To get started:

1. Open a bank account with at least $1000 that you have but don’t need
2. After a week go to the same bank and ask for a secured loan of $1000 with the reason for the loan being to establish  and build a good credit history.
3. After you get the loan, immediately make the first payment
4. Next week make the second monthly payment
5. The goal is to establish a history where you perform better than promised
6. Pay your monthly bill the day before its due
7. Continue to make monthly payments before the payment is due.

Install Credit Karma on your phone and make sure that you notice any and all changes (credit can change every day).

If you see anything out of place or showing as owed on your credit report either pay it if it is a legitamite bill or challenge it on your credit report.

Note that often bills or loans may be sold during a collection process. Understand that once sold, an owed bill is attempting to be collected by a third party. The first party that you actually owed the bill to will usually write off your unpaid balance as a bad debt (and claim a tax write off related to the loss value) and then they sell the unpaid debt to an outside collector. If that seems wrong, you might have a point. The money made from the write off and the sale of the original debt to the third party satisfies the oriiginal debt holder. You actually have no debt with the collector (unless they are working as part of the same company as the original debt holder or if its a government debt).

So being forearmed with this knowledge you can negotiate with the debt collection agency or you can ask them to prove that you actually owe them a debt. Most of them cannot produce this documentation since you never signed a debt with the collection agency.