 TITLE: Is My Money Safe During a Recession? CONTENT: How to Protect Your Credit During a Recession\n---------------------------------------------\nProtecting your money during a recession also involves protecting your credit.\nAmid an economic downturn, your financial situation could take a turn for the worse, resulting in your credit scores going down. Keep in mind, though, that a recession itself doesn't directly affect your credit scores.\nSo, how can you maintain your credit during a recession? Credit scores are computed based on how you manage your debt. If you lose your job and aren't able to keep up with your bills, your credit scores could suffer. Therefore, it's important to take steps to safeguard your credit if you're experiencing financial difficulties or in case you might encounter financial problems:\n*   **Keep an eye on credit reports and credit scores.** This can help you track how changes in your finances might be affecting your credit. With this information in hand, you can take action to shore up your credit, such as disputing an inaccuracy on your credit reports or tweaking your finances to improve your credit. Experian's free credit monitoring tool can help with this effort.\n*   **Pay off debt.** To the extent possible, reduce your debt so you can put yourself in a better financial position. To come up with more money to pay off debt, look at ways to trim spending.\n*   **Communicate with lenders.** Payment history represents the biggest factor in calculating your credit scores, so it's vital to keep up with your debt payments. But if you've fallen on hard times, reach out to your lenders to ask about ways they can ease your debt load, such as deferring payments or lowering your interest rate.\n*   **Stay within your budget.** A budget can be a crucial tool to help navigate a recession by helping you closely track your expenses and earmark portions of your income for various needs. This can help keep your finances in shape and can show how you may need to adjust your budget if you're already feeling financial strain. If you haven't created a budget, it's never too late to set up one. END