How to Find Out What Debts You Owe

Organizing your finances promotes a happy home.
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Building a life together means that you share dreams, memories — and finances. Both of you must work as a team to manage your financial obligations. To start, you need to know what bills and debts you have and are bringing into your relationship. Start your new life in control of your finances by gathering your credit history and bills and creating an organized, easy-to-follow system of tracking your debt.

Step 1

Pull your credit report to get a list of your credit cards, student loans, hospital bills, mortgages, and others to whom you owe money. Call or go to annualcreditreport.com. Order reports from Equifax, Experian and TransUnion all at one time; you get one free report each year from each of these agencies. Have social security number and the address(es) of where you have lived for two years handy when you request your reports. Ask the reporting agency to check into or correct any errors. Contact the bank, loan company or credit-card company or go online to get updated account information.

Step 2

Comb through your snail mail, electronic mail and papers. Look especially for accounts that have not appeared on your credit report. These might include electric, water, cable, cellphone and other utility bills; library fines, and gym memberships. You might find some of these, even overdue library books, on your credit report if you've been delinquent in your payments.

Step 3

List family, relatives and friends who have loaned you money. Ask them to write down or email to you how much you owe, when payments are due and what you have already paid them. Get a payment receipt with the date and amount of payment.

Step 4

List all of your debts and bills and keep track of them monthly. Create columns to list the name of the creditor, the interest rate, your balance and when payment is due. Save the list online, rather than in a notebook, so you can update information as a bill comes in. The cooperative extension programs for the University of Maryland and University of New Hampshire display sample worksheets. Microsoft Office provides many free budget and personal financial templates for download; consider using free budgeting software products, such as Mint, to keep track of bills.

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