Archives for "Inspiration"
Credit Repair Mysteries Unveiled
Your Credit Score is Not What You Think
Credit repair is not always clear-cut. You may be surprised to hear that you can pay your bills right on time for years on end and still have crummy credit scores. Your score is not a report card on your payment habits, it is a complex algorithm designed to predict the chance that you will default on a loan. There are numerous factors involved, many of which may seem to have no bearing on your willingness or ability to repay.
You Have Control Over Your Scores
Credit repair is about achieving an optimal balance of the factors that influence your scores. There are many dynamics involved, including the type of debt you use, number of accounts you have, utilization of credit lines, and age of accounts. The FICO scoring model may be a black box, inasmuch as the exact formula is not public knowledge, but the mechanics are not obscure. Credit repair is a science and you can control your scores.
The Credit Bureaus Make Mistakes
Before launching a credit repair effort it is important to know that the credit bureaus manage an unusually complex network of participants, all of which come together to create the credit reporting system. Creditors, collectors, and the service bureaus that catalog public records contribute the data. Massive software programs combine and sort it, and human operators supervise and guide the technology. Errors are commonplace and will not fix themselves.
Time Will Not Fix Your Credit
Errors will not fix themselves, nor will time. Credit repair is critical. Errors have a funny way of becoming entrenched and even multiplying as months and years go by. You cannot afford to imagine that a credit report left alone will shed reporting errors. Seven years will almost certainly leave you in even worse shape. You must look out for yourself and be as proactive as possible.
Deleting Errors is Only Half the Work
Everyone loves to see errors erased from their credit report, and it is indeed a wonderful thing. But error removal is not the only objective of credit repair. The ultimate goal is to have the kind of credit that will put a smile on the face of a lender. This involves more than a cleanup of your reports. You need to make sure you have the quality and quantity of accounts you need to get results.
Credit Repair Balloon
Your credit scores are calculated based on both the positive and the negative information on your reports. You can think of your scores as a hot air balloon. The negative accounts are the sandbags that keep the balloon from rising, and the positive accounts provide the hot air you need to ascend. You may cut off the sandbags, but without sufficient hot air your balloon will not go anywhere.
Building for Success
Many survivors of poor credit find themselves with no open accounts. The correct credit repair strategy for someone in this position is to simultaneously clean up the errors and rebuild positive credit. For most people attempting to rebuild, secured credit cards are the best alternative. They are inexpensive, and you will not be denied. Two cards will provide the lifting power you need. Just get them open, keep the balances down and watch your scores take off. Good luck!
Copyright © 2010 Sky Blue Credit Repair. All Content. All Rights Reserved.
Credit Repair: Your Best Financial Opportunity
Do Something Good Everyday
Do something good for yourself every day. Work hard and live well. And take advantage of great opportunities as they arise. Credit repair is one such opportunity. You credit has never been so important. Creditors have become hyper-sensitive to scores and will quickly adjust your interest rate according to the level of risk they perceive.
Life Changing Impact
But the impact of credit repair goes well beyond the interest rate you pay on your loans. Creditors are not alone in making decisions based on credit. Employers, landlords, and insurance companies also base their decisions on your credit scores and the content of your reports. When you put it all together it adds up to a potentially serious life changing impact.
How is Your Credit?
It is unlikely that you will find a single more influential factor in your financial life. And hence the remarkable power of credit repair. How is your credit? Your credit does not need to be bad in order to benefit from credit repair. Even a small tune-up can make a difference in a monthly payment or an insurance premium, and as time goes by these monthly payments become a powerful consideration.
Your Annual Checkup
Just as you go to the doctor for an occasional check-up, so also should you check in with a credit repair expert from time to time to make sure that your report is nice and tidy. It is also worth evaluating the structure and content of your report to insure that you are not missing any of the more subtle opportunities available to optimize your FICO scores.
The FICO Black Box
Your FICO scores are an important concern. And there is much more involved than just keeping up with your payments. Many of the elements that contribute to your FICO score are quite subtle. FICO is famous for being a black box, but credit repair experts are dedicated to understanding the issues that can cause unexpected damage as well as the opportunities that otherwise might be missed.
Do Not Stick Your Head in the Sand
There is another major factor that makes credit repair so important. And that is the almost inevitable presence of errors spawned by the complexities of the reporting system. There is a school of thought, sadly remiss as it is, that believes you should carry your burden of bad credit for seven years until it falls off by itself. They would have you stick your head in the sand and pay the price. This is a horrible and misguided idea.
Stand Up and be Counted
The credit bureaus are so far from perfect, and the reporting system, including creditors, collectors, and the service bureaus that funnel courthouse information to the bureaus, is so prone to error, that you cannot count on time to correct anything. The sad fact is that time is not your friend at all. If you do not stand up for your own rights the errors on your reports may perpetuate themselves forever.
Employ a Professional
The best way to take advantage of credit repair is to utilize the services of a professional. Credit repair companies can be found online and are remarkably affordable considering the breadth of work they perform for the money. The best of the breed charge in the range of fifty dollars per month, and will do everything from the initial evaluation to complete management of ongoing disputes. Whichever route you choose, the opportunity is one that should not be ignored. Good luck!
Sweet Budget Tips for Credit Repair
Build a Solid Foundation
If you want to repair your credit and improve your FICO scores you need to make sure your foundation is solid. There is little point in investing time or money in credit repair services if there is a likelihood of backsliding. One step forward and two steps back will never get you to your goal. One of the most powerful aides to credit repair is an intelligent, clever, and even entertaining budget. Did I say entertaining?
Financial Enlightenment
Solidify your foundation first and then start your credit repair. There are many amazing benefits to setting up a budget and none of them need to resemble an austerity program. The initial process of developing a budget can be entirely enlightening. It is a process of gathering, sorting, sifting, categorizing, and understanding the money you spend.
No More Fuzzy Understanding
Unless you are a credit repair veteran and have already gone through this routine it is not likely that you truly know about your financial life. True, it is your money, but it is likely that you do not see the whole picture. In fact, if you are like most people you live your life, spend the money you earn, or more, and have at best a fuzzy picture of where it all went.
Leave No Leaf Unturned
Clear your mind and your kitchen table. The big credit repair payoff is coming, but first comes the work. Get a full size pad of paper and a pen. Grab the last few months of credit card and checking account statements. If you keep a box of spending receipts, break it out. It is time to list every single dollar you spend, from daily incidentals to the monthly biggies, like rent and your car payment. Leave no leaf unturned.
Do the Math
Write down everything. Put the expenditures into categories, double check that you got everything. If you pay your insurance quarterly, multiply by four and divide by twelve to arrive at a monthly number. If you take an annual vacation, estimate the number and divide by twelve. Now it is time to add it up. How does it look?
Personal Self-Knowledge
The goal is to look deeply at the flow of your money. Personal self knowledge and credit repair are best of friends. Beyond credit repair there are wonderful emotional consequences of knowing where you stand. Living within your means can eliminate enormous stress from your life. Now is the time to take an honest look at the numbers.
Take a Tally
If you are earning more than you spend, congratulations! It is wonderful thing, and you are ready to embark on the credit repair journey without fear of falling. If you are spending more than you earn you are running a deficit that will come back to bite you, sooner or later. Now is the time to look at ways to recalibrate your spending. It does not have to cause pain.
Go on a Sweet Adventure of Life
Here are some sweet and happy ways that have worked well for many people in need of budgetary solidification prior to taking the credit repair journey. You should look at everything and put your brilliance to work, but for your consideration, how about these ideas: Eat at home more often, stage a weekly movie-at-home night, take a stay-cation this year and explore your own city instead of heading out of town, pack a lunch for work instead of hitting the deli for a ten buck sandwich, and you might even visit your car dealer and trade in your SUV for a more budget friendly vehicle.
Credit Repair is Safe and More
You will be amazed at the amount of money you can save without putting a dent in the quality of your life. In fact, many credit repair candidates report back that they have never been so happy with the money-saving changes they have made. Not only have they protected their long term credit repair results, but they have learned a few new tricks. Nothing warms the heart like a balanced budget. Good luck!
Copyright © 2010 Sky Blue Credit Repair. All Content. All Rights Reserved.
Practical Realities of Credit Repair
A Utopian Credit Dream
In the perfect world, the credit bureaus would never err. The billions of pieces of data they each process, related to more than two hundred million Americans, would all click right into place. When you examined your credit report there would never be a mistake. And there would be no use for credit repair.
The Facts of Life
In real life credit repair is the only way to insure an error-free credit report. The credit bureaus do an admirable job. It is no small task to coordinate the massive amount of information provided by millions of creditors and collectors, not to mention the public records gathered through courthouse sources. But the system is far from perfect. Errors are constant, and they are costly.
An Example
The real problem with reporting errors is the awful impact they can have on their victim. Here is an example of a common and expensive error, now resolved by credit repair. A woman examined her credit report and found five collectors all reporting the same debt. She defaulted on the debt a number of years ago, so initially felt that the derogatory accounts were her fate. Not so.
A Collector Pile Up
The woman ignored the mess on her report for a long while, but upon investigation discovered that only one collector may report a debt at a time. Collectors are expected to withdraw accounts from credit reports when they sell a debt. And as debt sales are a normal part of the collection business, and as collectors are typically remiss in their reporting compliance, collection accounts often pile up.
The Credit Repair Solution
A single round of credit repair dispute letters to the credit bureaus resolved the problem. All of the prior collectors simply withdrew their accounts when challenged; all gone. A quick check of her FICO scores showed that her scores rose close to 100 points as a result. It was a happy moment, but the magnitude of her score rebound brought a horrific fact home to roost.
The Real Cost
She had ignored the presence of these invalid collections for nearly three years. During that period of time she had lived with the belief that she was a sub-prime borrower. She had purchased a home and a car in that period and passively accepted the higher interest rates offered by her lenders. And to make it even worse, two of her credit cards companies raised her rates raised and lowered her limits. The cost of the errors was considerable.
The Good News
The good news is that the error was caught, and the purpose of credit repair was fulfilled. The truth was dour, but it is better to resolve a problem that to let it linger. The woman quickly refinanced both her home and automobile and was soon paying five-hundred dollars less each month. The credit card companies would not budge, so the story continues, but every day is much brighter.
The Moral of the Story
Do not take anything for granted. Credit reporting errors are as common as dirt and can be costly. Like the woman above, too many people make the mistake of thinking that bad credit is their karmic burden. You may have to live with the consequences of your past mistakes, but you should not have to pay for the errors of others. Do you have errors? Shine the light of credit repair on your reports today.
Copyright © 2010 Sky Blue Credit Repair. All Content. All Rights Reserved.
Your Credit Repair To-Do List
Credit Repair To-Dos
Credit repair is simple. It may require some effort, but if you take these basic steps you will witness a dramatic transformation in your credit reports and scores. Here is the essential credit repair to-do list that will help you reach your credit goals before you know it.
Do Open New Accounts
Now is the time to get back on your feet. Do not wait until your credit repair project is successful before opening new accounts. You should build new credit now. In fact, your credit scores will go nowhere without open and active accounts. Do not worry about getting denied; secured cards are an easy and guaranteed way to rebuild today.
Do Avoid Store Accounts
Not all forms of credit provide an equal credit repair advantage. Consumer debt, such as store cards, will not give you the same benefit as a MasterCard or Visa, even if you manage them perfectly. But a late payment will cause your score to fall more dramatically than a derogatory event on your MasterCard or Visa. Choose your credit carefully.
Do Keep Your Balances Down
Your credit scores are sensitive to your revolving balances. The higher your balances, the lower your scores will be, and vice versa. There is no lasting harm done by using your credit cards, but if you need your scores to be their best in the short term, you will need to get your balances down, and keep them there until you have achieved your goals.
Do Start a Savings Plan
Too many people have started credit repair, and made great progress, only to see their scores fall because of a late payment. Unforeseen events will happen, it is best to be prepared. If you start a savings plan you will be able to absorb the cost of unexpected expenses without falling behind on your monthly payments. A single late payment can send your scores into a tailspin. Take precautions.
Do Dispute Reporting Errors
If you see something on your credit report that does not look right, dispute it. This is an essential step in any credit repair process. Credit reporting is prone to errors, and errors can easily translate into financial harm. Errors can lower your scores, and lower scores can raise the interest rates you pay on money you borrow. Do not be shy, dispute errors with the credit bureaus. They will be fixed.
Do Stand Your Ground
If you dispute an error with the credit bureaus and that error is verified by them as accurate, you should not give up. Remember that every point on your score is important, and errors can cost you money. If you want your credit repair effort to be successful it is important to stand your ground. You do not have to accept verification as the final word. Write back and push the issue. Stand your ground and you may yet prevail.
Do Succeed
Credit repair works. Make the effort and you will succeed. The process is simple and the results are invaluable. As the months go by you will have the pleasure of watching your credit report improve and your scores go up. As this happens, doors of opportunity will open. Lenders, employers, insurance companies, and even landlords will see you in a new light. Start working on your credit repair to-do list today and success will be yours!
Copyright © 2010 Sky Blue Credit Repair. All Content. All Rights Reserved.