Warning: How to Avoid the BIGGEST Credit Card Mistake!!

What's up, Graham? It's you guys here, and yes, I know I'm making yet another video about credit cards, but this one is a little bit different, and it's easily the most important conversation we can have about this topic.

This is something so important that, statistically speaking, it's going to impact 20% of Americans, costing them 17 billion dollars. That means for every five of you watching, one of you is going to have this happen to them, and on average, this is going to cost each person about $1,100.

No best of all, as of September 21st, 2018, the solution to avoiding all of this is now free, and who doesn't like free? Hit the like button if you guys like free as much as I do.

So, if you're wondering now what I'm talking about, it's not me advocating against carrying a credit card balance and avoiding paying unnecessary interest. It's not me telling you not to get a credit card with a high annual fee unless it has good benefits. Instead, it's about the importance of freezing your credit. They promise if you've made it this far through the video, just give it the chance to watch it until the very end.

Like I said, a sense of you guys will be statistically impacted by this, and simply watching this video has the potential to save you many, many times over just by following a ten-minute video. So watch until the end.

Now, this really began in May of 2017 when the credit reporting agency Equifax was breached, exposing 145 million Americans to fraud. That is literally half of America that's been exposed. Hackers were able to access people's names, dates of birth, addresses, social security numbers, and in some cases, even their driver's license information.

It's also estimated that they were able to access over 200,000 credit card numbers. And this was so big that it even extended into Canada and the United Kingdom.

So what can somebody do when they have access to your information? The most common one is what's called tax fraud, which is where the identity thievery—I think they call it identity thievery; I just came up with that right now—but let's stick with that one. That is when the identity thievery files a fake tax return on your behalf. They will input fake numbers, fake income, fake everything, and then they get access to your tax return and cash it on your behalf—obviously to the identity thievery.

Now, having someone file a tax return and get your refund on your behalf usually goes undetected until you file your legitimate tax return with your real numbers, and all of a sudden, you realize someone else already filed this on your behalf, and they took your money. Now just as worse—and this seems to happen to me every single month, I don't know why—but this is when someone gets access to your credit card numbers and then makes fraudulent purchases using your card.

This happened to me recently where I looked at my credit card statement and saw that someone had charged like a hundred and fifty dollars worth of gas in Texas. Now, I had never been to Texas, and in addition to that, they decided to spend like four hundred dollars on Logan Paul's clothing line, the Maverick III. Again, I have no idea if you're stealing credit card information why you're going and buying Logan Paul's clothes, but that's what they did.

Now, thankfully, these credit card charges are very simple to deal with. You call up the credit card company, you say these are fraudulent charges, they reverse the charges instantaneously, and they issue you a new credit card. But where it starts to get scary is that when someone has access to your name, your social security number, your date of birth, and your address, they can pretend to be you online to then take out loans in your name.

Like maybe they go and they take out a five thousand dollar loan at Home Depot or they open up a ten thousand dollar Lowe's credit card, charge a whole bunch of equipment to that, and then the scammer just runs off. Most people won't notice until it's too late, until that person goes and wants to get a mortgage or a car or take out any sort of loan.

And then, all of a sudden, they pull their credit, and they find out that some scam artist took out $10,000 in loans, never paid it back. The account is now delinquent in collections, and their credit is shot. They just ruin their chances of getting whatever loan they originally wanted to get.

It's also up to you to prove that these were fraudulent, that you didn't take them out, and the entire process of getting something like that removed from your credit could potentially take months, or sometimes even over a year. That's months—almost a year—that you can't take out a loan on anything you want to get.

And especially if you're interested in investing in real estate, your credit is really the most important thing that you have. So how can you avoid this happening to you? And best of all, how can you avoid this for free?

This is called a credit freeze, and this is how it works. You have three credit reporting agencies: Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax. When someone pulls your credit, they're really pulling data from these credit agencies that use their own algorithms and pull their own data to calculate your credit score.

But what many people don't realize is that they have the option to place a freeze on these accounts, which means that when the freeze is in place, no one can get access and run their credit to be taken advantage of. A freeze restricts the credit report from being accessed by any lender, and when a lender can't access your credit report, they will not issue a loan on your behalf fraudulently.

When you want to freeze one of these accounts, you typically go online to whatever agency you want to freeze, you prove that it's actually you requesting that freeze, then they will issue a PIN number, which you will need if you ever want to unfreeze your account. That PIN number is only generated once and is something that they recommend that you write down and save in a safe place.

If you lose it, it's going to be a nightmare every proving that you want to unfreeze your account without that pin. So once the account is frozen, whenever you want to go and get a loan in the future, you simply use that pin, unfreeze the account, get whatever loan you want, and then you can go back online and freeze it until whenever you want to get a loan in the future.

Now, before Friday, September 21st, 2018, credit reporting agencies were charging people to do this. They were charging anywhere from $10 to sometimes over $20 just to freeze your account. This is how much that I personally was paying to do this, and it started adding up every time I wanted to get a new credit card, or get a car lease, or apply for a refinance.

And it just was such a headache to go and put in my credit card information just to freeze my accounts; it didn't make any sense. This was until recently when Congress amended the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which required that all of these agencies now offer a credit freeze absolutely free, for no charge whatsoever.

And like I said, this is free. There is no reason whatsoever not to do this unless you're in the middle of getting a loan or something like that. Just do it! It's the easiest, safest, freest thing now that you should be doing to protect yourself.

But wait, there's more! To make it even easier on you guys, I will put the links down in the description to save you the time, and all you have to do is click those links if you want to place a freeze on your account. It's as simple as that.

So now you don't even have to look at Google to find out where. It's all in the description. All I ask is that if you appreciate that, just hit the like button so we get more engagement on these videos for the YouTube algorithms. That's all!

So like I said, do this please. It's going to save statistically 20 percent of you from ever having this happen to you. I did this as soon as I was aware of the breach, and I have had no regrets since then.

Doing this is easily worth a few minutes it'll take just to get the peace of mind that this is never going to happen to you, especially for people like us who have worked really hard building up their credit, paying off everything on time, being a responsible adult, investing in real estate, using that credit to make even more money.

Any slip-up like this could be detrimental to you investing and continuing to grow your wealth, especially for real estate investors. I could have the perfect million-dollar deal handed to me on a silver platter.

In this, Graham, you're gonna make five hundred thousand profit, all you got to do is buy this. But if my credit is shot because I was a victim of identity theft, I am out of luck.

Okay, so in addition to that, it's also really important that you can monitor your credit score as well every few weeks. Now this is something I do pretty frequently, and it's cool just to see my credit score constantly like going up and up and up. I've gotten so close to eight hundred, but I've not passed eight hundred yet. One day!

But I personally used CreditKarma.com and also CreditSesame.com. Both of these are free; both of them will not negatively impact your credit score. There's a myth out there that says that if you check your own credit reports, that it lowers your score. That is simply not the case.

Both of these do what's called a soft credit pull, which means that nothing shows up on your credit reports. It doesn't negatively impact you. There’s no reason not to do this, and like I said, both of these websites are absolutely free. Everything about this video is free!

So it's just, free is free! I like free! Just make sure to sign up for one of these websites. Make sure to turn notifications on so that way if there is any change to your credit reports, you are immediately notified of that. And that's it—just keep an eye on it.

And I'm not sponsored by these websites; I'm not endorsed by them. I simply only talk about things that I use myself personally that I like, and there's no financial incentive to me making these videos promoting Credit Karma or Credit Sesame.

So all free! And also with these websites, if you do notice anything that looks suspicious or out of the ordinary, you can go and make sure it's taken care of immediately. Because the longer you wait to discover that something went wrong, the more likely it is you're going to be negatively impacted by that.

So besides that, that's it, and both options are free. And twenty percent of you, simply by doing this, will be saved about $1,100, which is the average amount of credit card or identity theft fraud in the United States—all for just spending a few minutes of your time watching a video and then putting a freeze in your account so that you make sure you are safe.

So in addition to doing that, and also signing up with Credit Karma or Credit Sesame and turning on the notifications on that so you get notified if there are any changes, you should be pretty safe. Just keep a close eye on things and make sure that your identity is not stolen.

So with that said, you guys, thank you so much for watching! I really appreciate it if you made it to the very end. If you guys enjoy videos like this, let me know in the comments down below what you guys think of videos like this and what other topics you want to see more of.

I read every single comment; I do my best also to reply to as many comments as possible. So if you have any insights, any suggestions, any way I can make these videos better, comment down below, let me know!

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And then I guess this is lastly—that was not this is lastly—I have a private Facebook group in the description for anyone who's interested in real estate, real estate investing, real estate agent mentoring, anything real estate. You want to be a part of that group; we're approaching 10,000 people in that group.

It's super supportive; everyone is amazing. People answer each other's comments; it's such a cool, helpful, respectful community. So if any of you guys want to be a part of that, add yourself to that.

Thank you again for watching, and until next time!