When you move to a new house, it often entails transformation. Depending on the proximity to your old location, the changes can be minor to major.
There is the acclimation to a new neighborhood, school, grocery, or block, and even just making your new house into a home.
What I want to point out in this post are things you may forget to take care of as your moving day looms closer. What I am talking about are tasks to take care of so that your credit doesn’t suffer from the move.
This includes updating your address on your utility bills, and some other things which we will list here.
Update your credit card statements
Firstly, you will need to update your credit card statements with your new address so that the statements can keep coming to you. Otherwise, you may not be able to see your statements or review them for accuracy since they’ll keep getting mailed to your old address.
To update your address, you will need to reach out to the lender or bank so that they can fix your personal information details in your account. You may or may not have the ability to do it yourself online.
If you get paperless statements then this step is not urgent. However, is it good to anyways update your address with the lender or bank so that your personal information is stated correctly in their systems.
Alternatively to updating your address, or in addition, you can sign up in the post office for their forwarding service which will forward mail that comes to your old address to go on to your new address. It’s a great service but you should not rely on it. It doesn’t always work properly and usually only works with first class mail. Although credit card statements are meant to be shipped as first class mail, it’s still not foolproof.
Update your credit report
You will also have to update your credit report with your new address. The reason for that is because the next time you apply for a loan, the address will come back as mismatching your credit report if it doesn’t reflect your current address.
You can update your address on your credit report by updating your new address on any of your credit cards or loans. It will take up to 30 days to reach the credit bureaus, but it will get to them. Your new address will then be on your credit report.
So, if you already updated your address on your credit card statements as we mentioned in the first step, then you don’t have to do anything in addition here to update your credit report.
Cancel old utility bills
You do not want to keep paying for water, electricity, and gas at your old address.
Cancel your old utility bills by reaching out to each company and informing them of your move.
People forget to do so and they keep getting billed. The issue is that the bills go to their old address so that they don’t even know they’re getting billed.
That’s until a utility collection pops up on their credit report for unpaid bills.
Be smart and cancel old utilities asap..
Update your car lease
Another bill to take care of is your car lease.
You will need to update your address on your lease so that the statements get mailed to your new address.
Update your mortgages
With the move to a new house you will usually have a new mortgage. Your new mortgage statements will usually automatically come to the new address, which the mortgage is on.
However, if you have investment properties or any other mortgages, you will need to update those so that the statements come to your new address.
Also, if you bought your new house before you moved in to it, you may have asked for the mortgage statements to temporarily come to your old address.
Now that you’re moving into the new home, make sure to update the mortgage company with your change of address. This way, your new mortgage statements will come to your new house as soon as you move in.
Update your new address with the DMV as well.