People often worry about Big Brother watching us, but don’t give a second thought to their credit record. Well, your credit history is the foundation of many things impacting your life. In fact, your financial profile can be boiled down to a FICO score.

So, just what is a FICO score? FICO is an abbreviation for Fair, Isaacs and Company, the business that came up with the calculation. Your FICO score reflects a calculation of various elements on your credit score ranking from the type of debt you have to payment histories.

Any person borrowing significant funds has run into their FICO score at one point or another. You might think you know everything there is about the FICO, but you don’t. This is because the calculation just changed.

FICO has always been criticized for being a bit unforgiving and structured. So, do the new modifications change this? Well, the issues being focused on are really more oriented towards the weight of certain events.

Historically, even one missed late payment could really hurt your FICO. The value given to one late payment was so high, that there was little difference between the score of a person who missed just one payment deadline and a person who missed many.

Fair Isaacs appears to have taken this one late payment criticism to heart. The new calculation process does not hammer a borrower who has one late payment. On the other hand, it reduces the FICO scores of multipayment problem borrowers even more.

When there is a system in place, there is always a way to trick it. The authorized user function of credit scores was one such trick. It has now been removed from all FICO calculations.

Time is on my side said the old song. Well, it really is in the new FICO. The longer you have credit that is positive, the more it impacts your credit score. If you are a parent, establishing credit for your kids is a wise move. Just hide the credit cards.

Whether you are just looking to get a credit card or something larger like a car loan or mortgage, your FICO score is going to play a big part in the process. Make sure you know what it is before you apply.

Source: Credit

Bad debt help can be found through the local Yellow Pages or on the Internet or through the lawyers depending on what type of help you need and how much debt you have accumulated. There are many options when you need bad debt help. If you have accumulated credit card debt, there are debt management consultants that will help you by talking with the credit cared companies and sometimes they will be able to negotiate a freeze on the interest you are paying so that you can catch up and finally get rid of the bad debt.

If your home is in danger of foreclosure because of bad debt, a debt consultant can help you by negotiating with the bank and your other creditors so that you have a payment arrangement that you can deal with monthly.  A payment that is within your budget and something that you will not back down from because it is too much, the debt consolidate or we’ll make sure it is just the right amount to stay within your budget.  They will also make sure you can afford your other monthly bills in addition to feeding your family.

Bad debt help is something many people need and should not be ashamed to reach out and ask for the help.  There are many reasons people accumulate bad debt, hospital bills, losing your job in this economy and the simple fact that the economy is faltering can send a family or an individual seeking help from a debt consolidation company.

Once you have received bad debt help it is important that you stay debt free.  The one thing is you do not want a repeat the cycle of bad debt.  You can start anew by obtaining a gas credit card and only using it when you need it and then paying it off every month.  This will restore your credit slowly but it will do the job.  You also must keep up with your mortgage payments and then the other loan payments even if the interest has been frozen; you need to keep up with the initial payments.

If you find yourself unable to make your monthly payments on your mortgage or your car payment or hospital bills and things seemed to be piling up, then you need bad debt help.  It’s better to seek bad debt help earlier than later. 

Debt consolidations in debt elimination’s are two separate things in both works with people who need bad debt help.  With a debt consolidation, they roll all your payments for all of your debts into one convenient monthly payment.  Whereas in a debt elimination, a debt consultants speaks with your creditors and tries to eliminate most of the debt because of extenuating circumstances such as a lost job or hospitalisation. 

And if you live in Scotland then you have a number of other debt help options available. For example you can avail of Trust Deeds if your debts are over £10,000 so debt help Scotland is just as easy.

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Source: Debt Management

The first and most important step into rebuilding your credit is to obtain a copy of your credit report from all three credit repositories, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. By reviewing a copy of your personal credit report you will be able to first make sure there are no current errors or inaccuracies contained within your report and second you will be able to see where you currently stand and how good or bad your credit actually it. Obtaining a copy of your credit will provide you with your starting point and make it easier for you to see where you are at and where you need to go.

Secondly, you will want to reestablish your credit by obtaining 2-3 credit cards and possibly one other type of debt, such as an auto loan, a personal loan, etc… Ideally, you want to have 3-4 new credit trade-lines to begin reestablishing your credit history. Believe it or not, credit cards, even with small maximum credit limits are probably the most important item to rebuilding your credit and increasing your credit scores quickly and efficiently. Credit cards show a payment history pattern, responsibleness with open credit, and usage patterns. The credit bureaus can measure a person’s credit history much better through open revolving lines of credit, such as credit cards, than other types of installment debts, such as auto loans. The most important things to remember with reestablishing credit are to make all of your payments on time, never borrow over 50% of whatever your maximum credit limit is on any credit card, develop a long established credit history and don’t close down credit accounts once they are paid off, limit the number of credit applications that you apply for and finally try to maintain a good mixture of various types of credit (for example 2-3 credit cards, 1 installment loan, and eventually 1 mortgage loan).

While on the road to financial recovery, make sure that you maintain adequate auto and health insurance. Medical bills are one of the top reasons that consumers file bankruptcy throughout the US. Living without having one of these types of insurance is extremely risky and can possibly ruin everything you are trying to regain if anything serious was to happen.

Finally, make sure that you create a household budget for you and your family. Set goals, write them down and work hard towards achieving these goals. Set money aside from each and every paycheck to put towards savings, retirement, a little safety net, etc… Do not live on credit and make sure that you only buy what you truly need and what you can actually afford. For more credit tips and helpful information please visit this very informative Credit and Credit Scoring Blog.

The author of this article, Dave Zwierecki, is the President of First Security Financial Service and has over 10 years of experience in the credit, mortgage lending, and home improvement fields. He is the owner of http://www.GoFirstSecurity.com and http://www.TheMortgageU.com, which are both sites devoted to the education of consumers regarding real estate, mortgage, credit, and home improvement related material.

The largest percentage of your credit score is derived from your payment history. Roughly 35% of your credit score is determined by how well you pay your bills on time. For example if the maximum credit score you could obtain was an 850, this would mean that you payment history would account for almost 300 points of your total credit score.

The second most important factor in credit scoring is your credit limit to credit balance ratios. If you have a credit card with a $1,000 maximum credit limit, the percentage that you owe compared to this limit will have a significant impact on your credit score. This factor in your credit scoring accounts for approximately 30% of your total credit score. Ideally, you want to keep your credit card or revolving credit balances between 20-40% of your credit limit. For example, if you have a credit card with a $1,000 maximum credit limit, you would want to keep this balance ideally at no higher than 200-400 dollars. Maxing your credit cards out is a very, very bad thing in terms of credit scoring and going over your limit is even way worse.

Coming in at 3rd is the length of your credit history, which accounts for about 15% of your total credit score. Having a long established credit history is going to hold a lot more “weight” than a short, newly established credit history. For this reason it is not good to close your credit card accounts after paying them off or transferring balances. Leaving credit card accounts open is much better and very important in terms of credit scoring.

Next, accounting for 10% of your total credit score is new credit and credit inquiries. Having a lot of inquiries against you on your credit report can have a seriously negative impact on your credit score. Thus, you should not constantly apply for credit. Do not apply for every credit card offer you see for the free gift, nor should you apply for credit that you do not need, just to see if you qualify. Try to keep your credit inquiries to a minimum. When shopping around for a mortgage or an auto loan however, keep in mind that you have approximately a 30 day window to shop around with whomever you want and have your credit pulled by multiple companies and as long as all credit inquiries are done within that 30 day window, they will only count as 1 inquiry against your credit score, which will have little if no negative impact.

Finally, the type and mixture of credit you have impacts roughly 10% of your credit score. If you have 2o credit card accounts, and no other credit, that is not a good mixture of credit usage. However, if you had say, 1 mortgage, 1 auto loan, and 2-3 credit cards, that is a very good mixture of credit and will help increase your credit scores.

Therefore, there are many different factors that help to determine your credit score. Understanding how all of these factors can improve your credit score can better help to improve your financial situation and better prepare you to obtain the best financing terms available on any borrowed money. Understanding credit can save you hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of your lifetime and a conscious effort should be made to improve your understanding of how credit and credit scoring works. For more information on credit and credit scoring please see the following blog at the Your Credit, Your Life blog

The author of this article, Dave Zwierecki, is the President of First Security Financial Service and has over 10 years of experience in the credit, mortgage lending, and home improvement fields. He is the owner of http://www.GoFirstSecurity.com and http://www.TheMortgageU.com, which are both sites devoted to the education of consumers regarding real estate, mortgage, credit, and home improvement related material.

Credit inquiries do account for approximately 10% of your total credit score. This means that out of a maximum credit score of 850, that credit inquiries alone have the ability to account for up to 85 points of your credit score. This can be a large percentage of your credit score, especially if you already have borderline credit. A lot of credit inquiries against your credit can have a very negative impact on your credit score.

So why are you penalized for having a lot of credit inquiries against your credit? The reasons are simple. If you have a lot of credit inquiries against your credit, and especially in a very short time, it means that you are out shopping for a lot of new credit and obtaining more debt or you are being turned down for a lot of new credit and you are desperate for credit. Either way, a lot of new credit in a short period of time is not good for your credit score, because these new accounts will have no established credit history and being turned down for new credit means that you have other deficiencies that are not permitting you for being approved for new credit.

So by shopping around between multiple lenders and trying to obtain the best financing you can for a house or a car loan, are you penalized by the credit bureaus? Yes and no. What I mean by this is that when you are shopping for an auto loan or a mortgage loan you have a 30 day window to shop around with multiple lenders and all of the credit inquiries will only count as one inquiry against your credit score. The 30 day window begins on the first day that you have your credit pulled and all of the inquiries need to be for the same type of financing to only count against you as one inquiry. For example you can not go out and apply with 2 auto loan companies, 2 mortgage companies and apply for a new credit card within and 30 day window and have them count only as 1 inquiry. This would count as 3 inquiries, 1 for the mortgage, 1 for the auto, and 1 for the credit card. The newest credit scoring models are even starting to allow for a 45 day window for shopping around because they realize that 30 days is not always feasible to obtain your financing within.

Therefore, by applying for a lot of new credit your credit score can be penalized. However, when shopping for big dollar items such as a car or a home, simply make sure that you do all of your rate comparisons and lender shopping within that 30 day window beginning on the first day that a lender pulls your credit. More information on credit, credit scoring and credit inquiries can be found at the Your Credit, Your Life Credit Blog.

The author of this article, Dave Zwierecki, is the President of First Security Financial Service and has over 10 years of experience in the credit, mortgage lending, and home improvement fields. He is the owner of http://www.GoFirstSecurity.com and http://www.TheMortgageU.com, which are both sites devoted to the education of consumers regarding real estate, mortgage, credit, and home improvement related material.

Keep an eye and observe whether you are a victim of stolen credit or identity theft or bankcards. Thieves are known to cause number of problems to your credit report. If at all this happens to you, be quick to order a credit report and begin work to fix it. The Credit report is very beneficial incase someone you recently had a huge medical bill to pay. As we all know the reputation of insurance companies and they are never on time in their payments. Occasions where you may even lose receipts, which will have a direct impact to your credit.

The credit report will be marked with charges for late payment or failure to make payments for no mistake of yours. These are the occasions where credit repair proves an efficient way to address these potential issues of your credit. There are number of advertisements promising to clear your credit and it is easy to fall as a prey to these cheap credit repair scams. You might think by paying a small sum of money these companies will be able to erase the debts from your report and that is completely misleading. Letâ??s be realistic as it is not possible to magically erase bad debts from your credit report.

In order to fix your credit report, be cautious of the charges implied and await a mistake from the credit bureaus. It is a strong possibility that someone elseâ??s credit charges could have been applied onto yours as millions of these reports with data are being produced. Hence, it is imperative to erase any incorrect information from your credit report. After this clean up activity, it is important to either consolidate all of the debts, or negotiate the amount with the bureau, or seek advice from the counseling department and organize the finance. Now, during these stages it is very important to make the payments on time and make sure the amount is manageable.

As you steadily work towards reducing the debt, there are number of ways to rebuild your credit to obtain further loans such as Mortgage, Car loans, etc. If at all you have hired some one for this service, make sure they are trustworthy and most established among the ones in the industry. In the whole process of clearing your debts, it is crucial not to ignore but understand the process. As it always does not mean that since you have hired someone to get a cheap credit repair you must ignore the other intricacies of good finance planning. It is a fact that a cheap credit repair can start with good financial management.

Tarron Acuff author of several debt websites & Ebooks. You can visit His site at Credit Information

]]> http://www.painlesscreditrepair.com/is-there-a-such-thing-as-cheap-credit-repair/feed/ http://www.painlesscreditrepair.com/credit-repair-services-101/ http://www.painlesscreditrepair.com/credit-repair-services-101/#comments Mon, 19 Nov 2007 16:52:10 +0000 Matt http://www.painlesscreditrepair.com/credit-repair-services-101/ The major problem of the consumers today is unfortunately bad credit. Then perhaps you are in need of credit repair services. A great percentage of the consumers face bad credit problems due to unpaid credit cards, late mortgage payments, bounced checks, unpaid loans etc. Most of the time, this is not due to the bad intentions of the consumer; but rather itâ??s because the customer has faced realistic problems such as losing their job, not getting paid their salary from the company, because the company that they work for is going bankrupt etc. All of these can lead to bad credit, as a person who loses their job cannot pay their credit card dues or their mortgage payments in time. Thus, in this case that person will need credit repair services to fix their credit.

Because every consumer in the United States who has social security number, also has a credit report and a three-digit credit rating; then their fate lies in these reports. A bad credit report can make you lose a good mortgage agreement and your loans will have excessive interest rates or you may not be able to get a loan at all.

Thus for the honest consumer who has a negative credit rating, due to realistic circumstances there are options and steps that they can take so that their credit reports become more positive. Now there are some do it yourself schemes but sometimes itâ??s much better to acquire the services of a professional credit repair services, so that your credit report can be made more positive, bound within the specifications of the law.

There are certain rights that the Federal law gives the consumer, if they have a bad credit report. One such right is the right to obtain a free credit report for every 12 months. There are three companies that generate credit reports (Equifax, Experian and TransUnion) and by law, you can ask for your credit report to exactly see what the problem is. Then again, also by law you can ask for dispute resolution through writing, to have the matter resolved after detailed investigation. However, with the professional advice of a credit repair services company, you may be able to go through these steps with ease. These companies can write on your behalf both to the consumer credit reporting company and to the creditor with whom you may have the dispute. They can also follow up with more letters and communications professionally; so that your case is handled with utmost care both in the credit reporting company and in the creditor with whom you may have a dispute.

Also with debt consolidation programs, you can easily have a single low monthly payment for the total of your debts. This can allow you to pay back your loans easily and with minimal effort. The fact that the loans have been closed or due credit card payments have been made in time will automatically increase the points in your credit report. Therefore, there are honest and legal ways that a credit repair service company can help to repair your credit and manage your debt. However, you must be careful when employing the services of such a company, as some companies may charge you for services that you do not receive. In general, you should be wary of a credit repair services that asks for money upfront. Living with bad credit is not a certain fate for you. You can take steps to remedy the situation and you can employ the help of a professional credit repair services to remedy your credit situation.

Tarron Acuff author of several debt websites & Ebooks. You can visit His site at Credit Information

]]> http://www.painlesscreditrepair.com/credit-repair-services-101/feed/ http://www.painlesscreditrepair.com/do-you-need-to-improve-your-credit/ http://www.painlesscreditrepair.com/do-you-need-to-improve-your-credit/#comments Mon, 19 Nov 2007 16:49:30 +0000 Matt http://www.painlesscreditrepair.com/do-you-need-to-improve-your-credit/ Credit scores are analyzed before determining whether to approve a mortgage loan or auto loans or for that matter any types of loans. Creditors analyze and determine whether they will be taking a risk by lending money to you or by evaluating whether you will be able to repay the loan amount or not. Hence, it is important that you have a pretty good credit scores or improve credit if incase of a bad track record. If you are denied a loan because of a bad credit score, before you apply for another one it is always advisable to improve credit scores.

Credit scores require consistent on-going effort from you and they are improved over a period of time. The best way to improve credit is to pay off the debts and that is the only quick fix to recover. Creditors use software, which analyze five major areas of your credit report. They are the Payment history, amounts that you owe, length period of your history, types of credits used, and what is your new credit.

It is not rocket science but easy to improve your credit scores and all that requires is attention to details in your credit report and an action plan to improve credit. Always remember to pay the bills in time as late payments have direct impact in driving your credit score. If there are backlogs or dues in payment, make sure it is cleared and stay updated. If at all there will be problems in paying the due amounts on time, contact the creditors and negotiate if they can keep away the late payment notifications off the credit report.

If the situation is very bad, it is suggested that you look for a genuine, trustworthy, non-profit counselor to avoid any untoward incident in promising a quick recovery from your credit issues. It is important to keep your balances on credit card minimal as higher the debt to the credit cards the lower your credit scores are driven down. Many people move around debt, which is not a suggested option, but what should be done is a pay off. At the end of the day, you owe the same amount to your creditor but having a number of accounts open will also impact your credit scores.

Zero balances always help improve credit scores and hence, do not close the unused accounts. Make sure you do not open several new accounts in a short span of time as opening many may trigger a wrong signal in managing the credits responsibly. Hence, check your own credit report regularly as this doesnâ??t impact your credit scores but helps you to keep a track of your own history. There should not be several inquiries about the credits as again this may trigger a signal to the creditors that multiple new accounts are being opened which may further low your credit scores.

If managed wisely, time will improve credit scores tremendously. One must realize that the damaged credit was not something performed overnight and hence, should not expect to recover or improve credit in a hurry. Hence, continue to pay your debts in timely fashion to see an improved credit score.

Tarron Acuff author of several debt websites & Ebooks. You can visit His site at Credit Information

Paying off a past due account will delete the negative account from your credit report. A late payment is just that, and there is no changing it. When you pay off an outstanding debt, your credit report will still show the listing as a negative.

Credit Score Myth #2

Bankruptcies and foreclosures cannot be deleted from a credit history. These types of negative listings on your credit report can be deleted. There are companies such as Lexington Law who specialize in getting negative listings, like bankruptcy and foreclosures, deleted. Although you can educate yourself and try to get these negative credit listings removed by yourself, it is recommended you enroll in a credit repair program to get these types of listing deleted.

Credit Score Myth #3

Disputing and getting a negative credit listing removed from a credit report is easy. It is simple to dispute a negative credit listing, but following up with the credit bureaus and getting the listing deleted is a difficult and time consuming process. There are credit repair companies who can make this less frustrating.

Credit Score Myth #4

Bankruptcy will allow me to start clean with a new credit history. The fact is bankruptcy is the absolute worst possible thing you can do to your credit history. Your credit report shows every account you choose to include in your bankruptcy as “Included In Bankruptcy”. This creates multiple negative listings, even if the listing was in good standing before. If not dealt with properly, your credit report will show multiple negative listings for up to 10 years as a result of filing for bankruptcy.

Credit Score Myth #5

Closing credit card accounts will increase my credit score. You reduce the amount of instant credit accessible to you when you close credit card accounts. Closing these accounts can and will bring your credit score down. As long as you keep your credit card balances under 35% of the limit, you can keep multiple open accounts. And as always, pay your statements on time.

Come on now people, can’t you read?!? If you are going to complain about the terms and conditions YOU AGREED TO, maybe you should find a tall building and jump read them next time! This guy even goes as far as saying they do not let you cancel your trial membership until after the trial period is over and you get charged (all you have to do is make one easy phone call within the 30 days and you will not pay). He should have his blog taken away from him. (For a good time read the comments below his post.)

Bottom line is, freecreditreport.com is a great service. If you can’t understand the ”terms and conditions” for any website for that matter, maybe you should shut your computer off permanently.