Posts Tagged ‘Three Major Credit Bureaus’

Secured Credit Cards Help with Bad Credit

March 22nd, 2010



If you’re reading this article right now, there’s a good chance you have bad credit. Does bad credit make you a bad person? Absolutely not. As the years go on this earth, the debt continues to go on as well. In fact, over thirty to forty percent of all Americans have some sort of debt that doesn’t include their mortgage. So, the question is, “What do you do when you have awful credit and no where to turn?” The answer is quite simple, apply for a secured credit card.

A secured credit card is a great way to re-establish your credit. Instead of applying for a bad credit credit card and have a low success rate of being approved, you should turn your head to a secured credit card where your chances of getting approved are almost one hundred percent. With such a high approval rate, this is why many people turn to a secured credit card when they are looking to re-establish their credit.

If you’re not familiar on how a secured credit card works, I’ll guide you through the process. Keep in mind that this type of card is very different than a regular credit card. When you apply for a secured credit card, chances are they you’ll be approved. This is because you’ll have to supply the credit card companies with a deposit The reason you’ll have to supply the companies with a deposit is because if you don’t pay off your bills, they will have something to fall back on.

Depending on what credit card you apply for, most credit cards only make you supply them with anywhere from three hundred to five hundred dollars to start. Usually, whatever you supply the credit card company with, this is going to be your credit limit. So, if you try to spend more than what you deposited, you’re going to find that you’re going to get denied for the purchase.

When you’re looking to apply for a secured credit card, make sure that the card you’re looking at reports to all of the three major credit bureaus. Most of the time, the credit cards will. If not, this will defeat the purpose of applying for a card to establish your credit all over again. Yes, a secured card will help build your credit because you’re technically still “borrowing” money from the company to prove that you can pay it off. Like I mentioned above though, if you can’t pay it off, the company will take away from your deposit. You’ll want to avoid this though because like in the past with your credit, you’ll want to avoid it because it will affect your credit.

If you’re looking to re-establish your credit and you have had no luck applying for credit cards, make sure you tend to avoid the bad credit credit cards and go the secured credit card route. If you learn your lesson from your credit past, you should make a change in your spending and you’ll be able to get the better cards and have better credit in no time.

By: Tom Tessin

Building Credit With Credit Cards

March 3rd, 2010



When people find themselves with bad credit the most common refrain they hear from friends, family and idiots on TV is “… first thing: cut up those credit cards!” That couldn’t be more wrong. Credit repair, like life, is often counterintuitive, and the role of credit cards in rehabilitating your credit scores couldn’t be more so. Let me walk you through a worst case scenario.

For our scenario lets assume you have horrible credit scores, sub- 500, with lots of write-offs and old, bad debt. The last thing you want to do is cancel any existing credit lines for two reasons. First, if you close them they will continue to report as a debt each month but they will not show any available credit and you need as much available credit showing as possible. Even a store credit with $289 owed with a $300 ceiling is better than $289 owed on a closed account. The second reason we don’t want to close any credit lines that are still viable is that with credit this bad you won’t be able to open any new accounts for a while so you’re best off working with what you have. Paying down that $289 debt to $149 will make a tremendous impact on your credit scores, probably pushing you above the “drop-dead” 500 credit score.

In a real worst case scenario you don’t even have one account active and clean enough to work with, thats when credit cards become a necessity if you want to rehab your credit within your lifetime. There are cards that will approve anyone with a valid social security number but the costs are high. A typical “worst case” card will offer guaranteed approval but your credit line will only be $300 and the fees to get the card will be upwards of $240, which is applied directly to the card. Thus you get a legitimate credit card that will report your good payment monthly to all three major credit bureaus but you will start out with a fat balance right away. The key is to now pay that down right away so that you are showing an available balance greater than half the maximum credit line of the card, in this case less than $149 owed on a card with a $300 limit. This may seem like a very predatory lending practise and it is, however you are not signing up for credit you are “buying” a credit booster. Simply paying this credit card balance off with on time payments will greatly improve credit scores within 3-6 months.

After you’ve had the “worst case scenario” card for 6 months, assuming you haven’t been late or defaulted on any new debts, you will no longer be a “worst case scenario”. You can now apply for a better card that will actually start with some credit. You usually need a job and one line of credit in good standing for 6 months to get a “step-up” card, that is where the “worst case scenario” card comes in. If you can transfer the balance from your first card to the new one that’s great but you don’t want to cancel the first one even if it seems silly to pay monthly and annual fees to keep a card you will never use. You will keep all of these cards until you have truly reestablished your good credit. This new card should have reasonable fees but you will still be paying $60 to $100 in set up fees and you will have an interest rate at the very high end. It doesn’t matter the interest rates because you aren’t supposed to use this card anyway, just let it bouy your credit.

After you’ve had both cards reporting good payment for about a year with low balances you will see an amazing improvement in your credit scores. The reason is because the formula the credit bureaus use to determine who deserves credit is based on who already has credit. The more unused credit you have the more credit lenders want to give you. At this point you should start replacing predatory cards with high annual fees with good cards with zero annual fees.

Building credit through “bad credit credit cards” is not the only way to improve your credit but it is one of the most important steps if you are really in a deep hole.

By: Mitchell Torek

Negative Credit Repair Help

February 4th, 2010



There are many people in our country today with bad credit that don’t even know it. In fact, most of these people won’t even find out until they apply for credit and are denied.

Will you be next?

Whether you know you have bad credit or not, there are steps you can take to make sure your credit is moving in the right direction.

Order a copy of your credit report. By law, you are allowed one free copy of your credit report from each of the three major credit bureaus per year. Make sure you that advantage of this. Either order all three at once to get a complete picture of your credit or stagger them throughout the year to keep an up to date picture. Review your reports with a fine tooth comb. Make sure to take your time and pay attention to every detail. Check your personal information for misspelling and wrong numbers or addresses. Review your credit accounts for proper dates and amounts. Make sure you recognize all the accounts listed on your report. Identity theft is a growing problem, don’t be a victim. And take a look at who else has been looking at your credit report. Dispute information that doesn’t belong there. While going through your reports, make a detailed list of all the information that is wrong or items that should no longer be there. Keep a copy of this list for yourself and send a copy of it, along with your credit report, to the corresponding credit bureau. Then all you can do is wait. A credit bureau is required by law to investigate all disputes and reply within thirty days. If any changes are made, they should send you an updated copy of your credit report. File a dispute with the creditor. If you know the information is wrong and the credit bureau investigation did not change anything, file a dispute with the creditor that listed the item. The process should be similar to filing a dispute with the credit bureau.

Remember, it’s your credit. It’s up to you to fix it.

By: K.M. Aguglia