• About Me
  • Courses
  • Contact
    • Ads
  • Press & Media
  • Free eBook
  • Free Facebook Group
  • Disclosures
    • Privacy
Yes, I Am Cheap
ADVERTISEMENT
  • Home
  • News
    • All
    • Politics
    stimulus

    Why You Might Not Get A Stimulus Payment

    Credit card security, equifax data breach

    How to Claim $125+ from the Equifax Data Breach Settlement

    foreclosure homes - When Does It Make Sense to Refinance?

    When Does It Make Sense to Refinance?

    no apple

    Get A New iPhone? Heck No!

    poor definition

    Mom Fired For Working At McDonald’s While Kid Plays In Park…Was She Wrong?

    What’s Keeping You From Finding A Job

    U.S. Students Fall Behind: Seemingly Get Dumber By The Minute

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Lifestyle
    • All
    • Food
    • Health
    mask insert

    Wearing A Mask? This Can Help You Breathe Easier

    high deductible health plan

    What Is A High Deductible Health Plan?

    free thanksgiving dinner

    How to Get Your Thanksgiving Meal for Free

    using hand sanitizer, your own

    How to Make Your Own Hand Sanitizer

    Yoga pose

    5 Ways to Practice Yoga on a Budget

    Traveling, new cultures, Start a Saving Challenge, Spend Smart on Food

    3 Simple Ways to Save for A Vacation

    Trending Tags

    • Golden Globes
    • Game of Thrones
    • MotoGP 2017
    • eSports
    • Fashion Week
  • Investing
  • Make Money
  • Learn Something
  • News
  • Reduce Debt
  • Rental Property
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
    • All
    • Politics
    stimulus

    Why You Might Not Get A Stimulus Payment

    Credit card security, equifax data breach

    How to Claim $125+ from the Equifax Data Breach Settlement

    foreclosure homes - When Does It Make Sense to Refinance?

    When Does It Make Sense to Refinance?

    no apple

    Get A New iPhone? Heck No!

    poor definition

    Mom Fired For Working At McDonald’s While Kid Plays In Park…Was She Wrong?

    What’s Keeping You From Finding A Job

    U.S. Students Fall Behind: Seemingly Get Dumber By The Minute

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Lifestyle
    • All
    • Food
    • Health
    mask insert

    Wearing A Mask? This Can Help You Breathe Easier

    high deductible health plan

    What Is A High Deductible Health Plan?

    free thanksgiving dinner

    How to Get Your Thanksgiving Meal for Free

    using hand sanitizer, your own

    How to Make Your Own Hand Sanitizer

    Yoga pose

    5 Ways to Practice Yoga on a Budget

    Traveling, new cultures, Start a Saving Challenge, Spend Smart on Food

    3 Simple Ways to Save for A Vacation

    Trending Tags

    • Golden Globes
    • Game of Thrones
    • MotoGP 2017
    • eSports
    • Fashion Week
  • Investing
  • Make Money
  • Learn Something
  • News
  • Reduce Debt
  • Rental Property
No Result
View All Result
Yes, I Am Cheap
No Result
View All Result

How We Improved My Realtor’s Credit Score By 100 Points In Two Months

Sandy Smith by Sandy Smith
February 5, 2021
in Credit Cards
0
improve your credit score
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

This post may contain affiliate links which may compensate us based on your interaction. Please read the disclosures for more information.


Welcome back! Have you checked out the free webinar on how to establish credit for your small business?


Helping people improve their financial lives is a core function of this blog.  I share the tools that will help you on this blog, but I leave it to you to implement the changes. Over the past few months, I’ve been taking my advice offline and putting them into practice with friends and family.

My realtor is a nice guy, but he is horrible with managing his money.  He had tried buying a car multiple times, only to be declined because of his credit profile.  I felt bad for him, so I decided to help him out.  After only two months his credit score has increased by 110 points dragging him out of the low 500’s and into the respectable 600 level.  How did I do it? Time to share.

Pull Your Credit Report & Credit Score

He has never actually looked at his credit report.  You have to know what’s on there before you can fix it.  You should know by now that you can get your credit report for free once per year from annualcreditreport.com.  While this will give you a credit report, it will not give you your credit score.  You can purchase this as an add-on when you get your free report.  If you do not have the means to pay for your score, I suggest signing up for Credit Karma.  This is a free service that will give you a score, but it might not be your actual score seen by the creditors.

By the way, every time you are rejected for credit, you are entitled to a copy of the credit report that was used to make the determination.  In this case he could have requested a copy from the car sales company for free.

Check Your Credit Report For Errors

Sometimes the reporting companies get things wrong.  In my case, part of my name has been wrong and an address was on my file that did not belong to me.  You might notice errors with your Social Security number, collections accounts that are paid, credit cards did not belong to you, or hard pull inquiries.  Pay close attention to everything on your report because correcting these errors can significantly improve your score.

In my realtor’s case he didn’t really have any errors on his report.  What he did have were a bunch of inquiries, over 50 in total, from him trying to buy a car.  He went to a car company that professed to guarantee approval regardless of your credit profile.  What he didn’t realize was that the car sales company farmed his information out to about 30 different second rate lenders.  Every time he went to one of these kinds of car sales companies, they were sending his information to multiple lenders at a time.

The more inquiries you have on your report, the more it can impact your score.  With over 50 inquiries in less than two years, his score was being dragged down unnecessarily.  Just shopping around to multiple lenders within a short period won’t necessarily kill your score, his problem was that he did this over a period of two years. Nothing he could do here but wait until they fell off after two to three years but I told him to do the following:

Stop Everything

If your credit score is bad, stop applying for credit.  I told him to stop trying to buy a car unless he had cash.  The more you apply, the more you are rejected, the more you dig a hole for your credit profile.  Stop applying for anything else until your get your credit under control.  It really is the best thing that you can do for yourself.

Pay On Time

If you’ve had a spotty payment history, let’s leave that in the past and begin anew.  Begin paying everything on time every time.  It doesn’t matter if you’re only paying the minimum, just make sure that you pay it.  Your current history has a stronger impact that your older history.  The more your mistake ages, the less of an impact it has on your current score.

Give It Time

Time is your friend.  In my realtor’s case he had gone through a nasty divorce almost six years earlier that pretty much killed his entire credit profile.  According to him, his wife maxed out all of their credit cards and took new loans out in his name as they were going through their divorce.   Unable to keep up with his bills, he lost his home and stopped paying his credit cards.  His credit profile had more than 15 charged off items.  He currently has no credit cards and dealt entirely in case.  From looking at the age of the charged off items, I could see that they were nearly six years old.  He wanted to know if he should pay them.  I told him that in no circumstance was he to call these companies and try to pay anything.  All he had to do was wait out another year or so before they started dropping off his report.  The debt that has been sold and showed as collections items we would handle separately, but he was not to pay them either.

Did you think that I would have told him to pay them? Sometimes, not paying is actually better for you than paying.  His debt has long been charged off meaning that the creditors had sold the debt years ago and took the loss.  Paying the original creditors would have had no impact and paying or even acknowledging the collections accounts from those debt might trigger the zombie debt effect. Read that article for how to handle those.

By the way, if someone else gets credit in your name without your permission, that is fraud.  Add a fraud alert to your credit profile and freeze your credit.  Then get in contact with the creditors directly to alert them to the fraud. Finally, report this to the police.

Dispute Everything

This is where some debt and credit experts might say that I was somewhat unethical, but it works and some companies that you pay use this same tactic: I told him to dispute everything.  What did he have to lose?  Remember, some of the debt was incurred by the wife who took things out in his name as he was divorcing her.  Why should he be responsible for the debt if they belonged to her?  I had him dispute all of the charged off items and the collections items as not belonging to him or being erroneous.

Once you dispute an item on your report, the creditor has 30 days to respond.  Things that you can dispute include the amount of the debt, missed payments, duplicate items on the report, collections inquiries being listed as hard pulls as if you applied for credit (saw this an another person’s report who I helped), or whatever else you think might be wrong.  You might need to have some documentation on hand to support your claim, but so far, I haven’t seen anything requested.

After 30 days, if the original credit issuer can not verify your information they must remove it from your credit report.  This can be a gold mine if negative things are coming off.

Monitor Your Report

After your thirty days are up, begin monitoring your report.  Be aware that with three different credit agencies (Equifax, Experian, TransUnion) you will have to monitor all three scores.  While you won’t be able to get another free report from the same company, you can pay to receive another copy of your report or you can use a free company like Credit Karma to monitor changes with your report.    Credit Karma only gives you TransUnion information. Credit Sesame, another free service, gives you your Experian Score.  Credit.com‘s free Credit Report Card gives your Experian score and is updated monthly. Hey, it’s free and free is good.

The Result

My realtor called me quite giddy about his result.  His score improved by almost 120 points with Experian in only two months.  Why? His creditors were not able to verify 7 negative items within the allotted time, so, they were removed.  A duplicate account with a negative history was also removed.  Finally some of the hard pulls on his profile were removed.

Can you do this too? Absolutely.  I have now successfully helped a few people improve their scores.  As you can see, there is no rocket science to this, and it can cost you absolutely nothing to get it done.

 

Related

Previous Post

Living Paycheck To Paycheck Infographic

Next Post

Woman Sues Equifax For Credit Errors and Wins $18.6M

Sandy Smith

Sandy Smith

I started this blog years ago as a way of keeping myself accountable to my own debt reduction plans. Now I'm using this site to help others get out of debt, and learn about personal finance so that they can live their best lives.

Next Post
credit errors

Woman Sues Equifax For Credit Errors and Wins $18.6M

Stay Connected

  • 5.6k Fans
  • 10.1k Followers
  • 4.7k Followers
ADVERTISEMENT
  • Trending
  • Comments
  • Latest
Tips For Buying A New Car

Tips For Buying A New Car

February 4, 2021
high deductible health plan

What Is A High Deductible Health Plan?

March 31, 2023
Cost of Living in the 1950’s as Compared to Today in 2013

Cost of Living in the 1950’s as Compared to Today in 2013

February 5, 2021
house

Hidden Costs Of Home Ownership

February 4, 2021
Federal Student Loan Debt Relief

Why Some People Should Wait Before Applying for Student Loan Forgiveness

October 18, 2022
AirBnb Experiences

Why Airbnb Experiences Are The Best Side Hustle

July 10, 2021
mask insert

Wearing A Mask? This Can Help You Breathe Easier

February 21, 2021
Scams

What’s The Deal With All The Scammers Lately?

February 18, 2021

Recent News

Federal Student Loan Debt Relief

Why Some People Should Wait Before Applying for Student Loan Forgiveness

October 18, 2022
AirBnb Experiences

Why Airbnb Experiences Are The Best Side Hustle

July 10, 2021
mask insert

Wearing A Mask? This Can Help You Breathe Easier

February 21, 2021
Scams

What’s The Deal With All The Scammers Lately?

February 18, 2021

Helping you live your best financial life through personal finance news and education

Follow Us Everywhere

Browse by Category

  • About Me
  • Auto
  • Credit
  • Credit Cards
  • Finance 101
  • Food
  • Get Out of Debt Course
  • Health
  • Investing
  • Learn Something
  • Lifestyle
  • Make Money
  • News
  • Off The Reservation
  • Partner Posts
  • Politics
  • Rants
  • Reader Advice
  • Recipes
  • Reduce Debt
  • Rental Property
  • Save Money
  • Scams
  • Special Offers
  • Spend Money
  • Sponsored Posts
  • Video Pick
  • Weekly Roundup
  • Work

Recent News

Federal Student Loan Debt Relief

Why Some People Should Wait Before Applying for Student Loan Forgiveness

October 18, 2022
AirBnb Experiences

Why Airbnb Experiences Are The Best Side Hustle

July 10, 2021
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact

© 2021 Say Yes Services LLC. All rights reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • About Me
  • Courses
  • Contact
    • Ads
  • Press & Media
  • Free eBook
  • Free Facebook Group
  • Disclosures
    • Privacy

© 2021 Say Yes Services LLC. All rights reserved.

This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are as essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT