Roger Passman asked:




In my work I speak to many people that have unrealistic, almost grandiose, ideas about repairing their credit. My response to the person whose expectations exceed the limits of the possible is to send them to someone else. One of the factors contributing to damaged credit in the first instance is that attention is not paid to the possible allowing grandiose ideas to stand in the way of sound financial planning.

When working to repair one’s credit there are three factors that must be considered. First, is the item you would like removed from your credit report legitimate? If it is it will generally stay a part of your report until time takes care of the item. Secondly, how old is the item you would like removed? The further away from the present the item is the less it impacts your FICO score. Finally, what has your credit history been in the past 12 to 18 months? If potential creditors see a pattern of on time payments and sound financial practices, it is more likely that they will offer additional or new credit even if your score remains somewhat damaged.

Credit repair consists of two important stages, both of which mirror the concerns mentioned above. The first stage is to work to remove inaccurate or mistaken information from one’s credit report that have an adverse impact on one’s credit score. Some items may look bad but have little effect on one’s overall score. A tax lien, for example, that has been discharged may continue to appear on one’s credit report for up to ten-years and, under some circumstances, even longer. But that discharged lien has a low impact on one’s overall score and may not be worth the effort to try and remove it. A pattern of late payments, on the other hand, may have a high impact on one’s score and may well be worth the effort to remove or re-age if removal is impossible.

The second stage in credit repair is to make sure that from the moment one begins to actively repair one’s credit that no additional adverse be recorded on the credit report. Not only does that defeat the purpose of the credit repair effort, it sends up red flags for the credit bureaus to not take your repair efforts seriously. That is the last thing one wants when working to restore one’s credit score to acceptable numbers. This stage requires a change in lifestyle, as one must relearn sound fiscal habits that will assure no additional adverse information be recorded by the credit bureaus.

Effective credit repair seeks to eliminate inaccurate, mistaken and unverifiable adverse information from one’s credit report. It cannot remove items that are legitimate, verifiable and true. To claim otherwise is unethical and may even be illegal.

Victor

eany1955 asked:


I tried the triple advantage, which I still need to cancel, late may.
Last week, I tried to use one of my credit cards since I had not used it in a while and it would not work. I recently moved here so I thought that it was identity prevention.

Ok, so I called.

They told me that based on the information from Experian the decision was made to close my account.
Reason: High balances.
My credit score: as of May 28,(from Experian) 703.
It was up from 617 a year ago.
So, I don’t understand, if I didn’t miss any payments in all the years I’ve had my 8 accounts opened, I’ve had high credit usage for quite some time (like 2 years), it’s not like this happened over night to be of any concern to them, then why did this happen exactly at the time I am paying Experian to monitor my credit?

Maybe I could understand no account activity, but I’m not buying the high credit balance on open accounts.

I don’t know, it’s a little suspicious.

Why didn’t they want to keep making money off of me? I don’t mind, I used this credit card as a student loans, especially for my rent while in college. I’m paying them off one by one.

There was a point when I was unemployed for 6 months and made on-time payments on all my 8 accounts, the same amount I pay for them today.
I feel like they really got it wrong this time.

Adrian

Link_The_World asked:


I am 24 years old, and I dont have a credit score. I have a monitoring program that shows me my new report every month as well as my new score. My score says it is a 0…and it says that I have a “thin file” which means I dont have enough information to have a credit score yet. It makes sense since I have never had anything in my name that would be on my report.

Anyway my question is, I finally got a credit card 5 months ago and I STILL dont have a score even though my report shows that I am making on time payments with that card.

Someone told me to NOT pay the balance off in full and to just pay off half the balance but roll over the balance. Obviously I will get finance charges but thats what they say to do to get a score quicker. I have never heard of this have you? What would you do if you were me and you wanted to get a credit score???

Christian