Improve Your Credit Score - 3 Tips to a Better Lifestyle

If your score is lower than 760 you are likely paying higher interest rates and not getting the most out of life. You should take action to improve your credit score, after all this three digit number impacts your lifestyle is so many ways! If you rent or own your home, what sort of car you own, you're interest rates, and most importantly your hard earned money and how much you can keep.

1. The first thing you need to do is figure out what is on your report. You can request a copy from each bureau annually for free by visiting annual credit report. You may be surprised out how much your reports will vary from one bureau to another.

If you discover errors or inaccuracies on your report you should file a dispute. It is estimated that 25% of all reports carry errors on them. These errors could be costing you real dollars and cents!

2. Next you should settle outstanding debts. Before you just start paying old bills it is important to use debt validation. This will require the collection agency to provide legal evidence that they own your debt and can collect on it. If the agency is unable to do this then you do not have to pay them and when you dispute the item on your report it will be removed. It is not unusual for debt collectors to be unable to prove they own an account.

If the agency is able to show they own your account then you should make a settlement offer. We suggest you start your offer at 50% of the total debt. Remember these agencies purchased your account for pennies on the dollar and have also added in fees and charges that they assessed to you. In other words not money you borrowed from the lender or interest rates you agreed to with your original lender.

You should never pay the full amount unless you feel morally obligated to. Additionally as a stipulation of your settlement you must get the agency or debt collector to agree to stop reporting this account negatively to the bureaus. If you do not get them to agree to this then just paying your bill will not improve your score.

The negative credit item will remain on your report, it may be changed to paid but that will not improve your score. Make sure to get this stipulation added to your settlement and don't worry it is standard practice. You need to do this so when you dispute this item on your report and file a dispute. Once the bureau investigates and contacts the debt collector due to your settlement agreement they will not verify your debt with the bureau and thus the item must be removed from your report.

3. Have available credit that you are not using. The best example is with a major Visa or MasterCard if you can keep your balance at roughly 30% of your limit it will help your score. This is because it shows you have money that you could borrow but are not using it. In other words it gives the impression that you are in a comfortable financial situation and not in dire straits borrowing anything and everything you can.

For a free credit consultation call us at 1-800-232-2903 or visit us to learn more about how to Improve Your Credit Score or how to Fix My Credit.

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New Debit Card Fees Have Customers Looking For Better Options

Bank of America has announced that it will now be imposing a fee on any of its customers who use their debit cards to make purchases, starting in 2012. The fee will be five dollars a month which when added up amounts to sixty dollars a year. Many customers are up in arms about the new fee and are ready to leave Bank of America as soon as possible, myself included.

The new fee does not necessarily affect everyone who banks with Bank of America, but the bad part of this is that those who will have to pay the fee are those who are most likely to not be able to afford the fee. The fee will be charged to anyone who uses their debit card to make purchases at a store, no matter if the card is used only once or a hundred times. If the card is only used at the ATM however, customers will not be assessed the fee. Also those who have at least $20,000 in their bank accounts and those who have a mortgage with Bank of America will not be assessed a fee.

Still, those of us who don't have enough good credit to buy a house and don't make enough to have $20,000 in the bank at once will start having this fee. For many customers it feels like Bank of America is penalizing them. This is causing a lot of customers to commit to switching banks, but surprisingly a good number of others are sticking with Bank of America despite the fee.

Of course most people who continue to bank with Bank of America will be those who are not affected by the fee. But even those who will start to be assessed the fee may decide to stick it out anyway. Some people are willing to pay the fee for the convenience of Bank of America's branch and ATM locations. Others will stick with it for the convenience of not having to switch over all their funds and direct deposits. And surprisingly enough, there are also those who just don't care that they are being charged this extra five dollars even though switching to another bank may mean they wouldn't have to pay. This is sometimes due to loyalty to a bank that has been an excellent financial provider for them in the past, or simply because they may not have time to worry about the new fee.

But when other banks, such as Wells Fargo who has already announced a similar fee plan, are jumping on the bandwagon with this fee idea where are the customers who are fed up going to go? One option is Citibank, which has so far claimed that it will not be adding the monthly fees for its customers. There also may be other banks that choose not to add the fee, in hopes of taking over all the customers who are fleeing Bank of America. These could become options for customers, but it is necessary to be wary when switching to a bank that claims it will not implement the fee. It may not be implementing the fee at first, but this could land customers in the same spot they're in now if the bank decides to change its mind a few months later.

Another option for some customers is to switch to a credit union. The problem here though is that the credit unions only accept certain customers and it may be difficult for customers to get in to a credit union. Here in North Carolina we have the NC State Employees Credit Union, which has an excellent checking program, but unfortunately it is not open to everyone. Only state employees and their direct relatives are eligible to bank with the NCSECU. But there are still options for customers who are not eligible for most credit unions. New websites are popping up online to help customers find credit unions that will accept them.

One last option is to withdraw money from the bank altogether and start working only in cash. But in the digital age this may be more hassle than it's worth. Many businesses are starting to only pay their employees by direct deposit, though some companies who do this may have some hidden options for employees who don't have bank accounts. But working only with cash eliminates the ability to shop online unless the customer makes all their online purchases with credit. As we have discussed in some of our previous articles, purchasing on credit can help credit scores but it can also hinder, so customers should be wary about taking this financial route. There are also many stores who are no longer willing to take cash, which could become a hassle for those who choose to start working with only cash.

Any way you spin it this new fee is not great for consumers. Because consumers will have to start looking into other financial options this new fee may start to affect some people's credit scores. And because of that this may be added to the list of ways that people are winding up with bad credit through little to no fault of their own, like we discussed in our article 8 Missteps to Bad Credit.

Jessica Harmon is a staff writer for Scott McCorkle's Credit Capitol. If you would like more information on how we can help get you an auto loan today, please visit our website!

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Using Secured Credit Cards To Better Your Rating

At one point in time, if you had a poor credit rating you would generally be disregarded by any type of lending company, you would feel shut out and be forced to struggle and cope with your bad financial situation. In today's world vendors have started to take advantage of the situation you are in and provide you with many solutions to help get you out of the red and back in the clear, however not all of these methods are as good as they first appear. Secured credit cards, loans for people with bad credit, payday loans and cash for gold schemes are all techniques that are widely available to help provide you will a little extra cash in your time of need.

For many people loans are out the question, they can acquire a substantial amount of debt as you there will be a minimum amount a company will offer you (which is usually more than you might need) and you are left with at least a few years of debt over your head where you must constantly repay the lender of a basis that they choose. The same can be said with payday loans, although these loans are generally short term and the company is repaid within the month, they offer extremely high interest rates that you will struggle to find with any other financial solution that can leave you even more out of pocket that before.

Secured credit cards may also have downfalls however when we compare this against the other options and it can also seem like the best technique to increasing your credit rating.

It is well known that credit cards can be used to help better your credit rating because of the way they work. Generally all companies will contact the credit bureaus and they will inform of them of when you managed to make a repayment on time, when your payment was late and all other information similar to this. Our credit score gets damaged based on when we miss or fail to make a payment, this can be relative to anything such as a late mobile phone bill or failing to pay back a loan.

So how can secured credit cards help us?

Secured credit cards work in a similar way to secured loans; to first apply for a secured card we must make a deposit or offer the lending party something of value to us. Whatever the object is that we use, it is then stored as a safety agreement between you and company, you will then sign to say that if you fail to repay what you owe the company can take this item. Of course the great thing about this is that if you fail to pay, you still pay.

Credit cards are known for their ability to raise credit. If you make a purchase with your credit you will usually receive a bill with this purchase the following month, however the great this is if we make a payment on the 8th, we can pay it off on the 15th. This means that before the bill has even been sent we have borrowed and repaid the money, this is reported to the credit bureau and works heavily in our favour when our new score is calculated and as you can see from this method secured credit cards can easily provide with a great and quick solution to raising our credit score.

If you are looking for a place to find the cream of the crop, so to speak, you might want to take a look at, Best Secured Credit Cards.

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