Credit Scores & You
Your Credit Score is possibly the most important number in your life..
and you probably don't even know what yours is...
Often times bad credit can feel like a curse, especially in today’s society. We live in a culture that is undoubtedly credit driven. While our grandparents may have handled everything in cash, as the pricing of things has gone up we have become a cashless society that relies on credit for practically everything.
A three digit number can have a very powerful impact on many aspects of our lives and our family’s lives. Negative credit results in significantly higher interest rates, higher car insurance, higher deposits for utilities, loan rejections, etc.
When negative credit is left unchallenged it will remain on your credit report for a minimum of seven years. However, many collection agencies resort to “re-aging” practices and this can haunt you for a much longer period of time. Re-aging is the act of changing the date of a tradeline to restart the seven year clock. This is why credit monitoring is absolutely crucial so that at the very least you can be notified of any changes on your credit report in real time.
Contrary to popular belief credit repair emcompasses a lot more than just sending a few letters. Many people opt to go the DIY route and they inadvertently end up using template letters. These give the credit reporting agencies the right to mark investigation requests as being “frivolous”, thus resulting in devastating results because the credit reporting agencies are no longer obligated to investigate your claims.
In order for credit repair to work you’ll need to have seasoned professionals like our Council’s credit experts on your side. When properly executed, credit repair can address challenges such as but not limited to, 30-60-90 day late payments, repossessions, inquiries, foreclosures, bankruptcies, student loans, and liens. However, you’ll need to have a strategy before you embark on your credit repair journey. Disputing every single derogatory tradeline on your credit report at the same time will pose a big giant flag and will get you no results. It’s highly advisable to work on a limited number of challenges each month. There is nothing worse than having the bad credit come back onto your credit report after you’ve managed to get it removed.
In addition to working on repairing your bad credit it’s incredibly valuable to add some positive tradelines if you can. There are a few tricks you can use to give your credit score a boost. If you have a family member with good credit you may want to ask them if they’ll put you on their credit card as an “authorized user”. This allows you to piggyback off their credit score. For example, if your aunt has a ten year old Visa trade line with a $10,000 limit but the balance is 35% or less, you can effectively adopt the positive rating of this tradeline. The “authorized user” trick can easily boost a credit score by 40 points or more. The best part is that there is no risk to your aunt because she will be the one to physically receive the card in her mailbox, therefore she won’t have to worry about you going crazy on a shopping spree.
By hiring one of our Council’s credit experts you’ll achieve fast and permanent results. They’ll give you an indepth analysis of your situation and they’ll custom tailor create a credit restoration and score boosting plan to meet your needs and goals.