Okay, so you buckled down and started clearing up your credit report from all those dents and dings and you proudly go to check your credit report and you nearly fall over when you see the sad little 629 you started with has dropped to an even sadder 550.

You’re probably wondering what the heck happened. You got some collections removed and you even applied for (and received) a credit card from First Premier Bank to help boost your credit. How could your credit score be lower?

The inquiry from First Premier probably isn’t hurting you because there is now an open line of credit reporting on your credit report. However what probably is hurting you is the fact that you were issued a Mastercard with a $250 line of credit and First Premier in their infinite wisdom charged you fees and membership dues and ran you immediate balanced up to $201. This makes it look like you’re a major spendthrift and you don’t want your balance close to your credit limit.

Quick Remedies?
Pay down Premier to at least less than $100 owing but do not pay it off, you need to create a payment history and you obviously can o­nly do that by making monthly payments.

Next, concentrate o­n getting a credit card with a high credit limit and only use it a little so you have a few months of monthly payments - this will help to raise your credit score quickly. Don’t fret because you know your score is too low to qualify - read on - there *is* a solution.

Those cheesy catalog cards actually have a purpose. You can get a credit limit you would otherwise not have a snowball’s chance of getting and this card is reporting to at least one major credit bureau. Meaning, it will look like you have a Mastercard with somewhere between a $2500 and $7500 credit limit. Your credit score will boost quickly o­n that.

So you’ll look great on one credit bureau. How does that help your overall credit scores?
Easy, o­nce you have established a 90-180 day payment history, write to the other two credit bureaus and request that the account be added to your credit file. This is called “Adding a manual tradeline”. It won’t be updated automatically, however it will help boost your score on the other two credit bureaus by showing you have an unsecured, revolving line of credit with a lotta space between your balance and your credit limit.

Have your bureaus updated periodically to keep building up your credit score and many people report an increase o­n the average or 175 points and some over 200 points in less than 60 days.
UltraVX is one of the hottest catalog cards people are using to clear their credit because they offer up to a $25,000 limit. However that limit isn’t given off the bat and it can take a while to get up to that amount. It is still a very worthwhile offer none the less.

I personally like USA Platinum check out these perks and you start off with a limit of $12,500:

• The Card is an Unsecured Line of Merchandise Credit
• The Shopping Club offers over 14,000 products.
• Upon request, credit limits increases are available to those that qualify.
• The merchandise credit line is reported to a major Credit Bureau.
• No credit checks.
• No employment verifications.
• No interest charges.
• You can be approved even if you have No Credit or Bad Credit

Click the pretty card to apply:

And there you have it, it’s easy to do and will require just a little little effort from you - get to it and enjoy the benefits of a better credit score!

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So you decided to work on your credit, good for you!

Improving your credit score will save you tons of money in the long run in forms of interest and other penalties banks and financial institutions love to heap on people with mediocre to poor credit scores and it’s easier than you think to raise your credit score.

Starting to clear your credit is the hard part and by that I mean the actual getting started. It’s a pain in the posterior to write to the credit bureaus or go to their websites and then fill out the forms and then wait. What if you could get all three credit bureaus at the same time?

Check out Credit Reporting.com not only do they give you a merged report, they have a ton of resources available including dispute letters (change it to fit your own needs and make it individual) and they are very reasonably priced too.

Refer to the tips I’ve given you in this blog, it’s easy to clear your credit once you start. Remember everything doesn’t have to be gone overnight and it took time for your credit to fall into disrepair and it will take time to recover. Don’t be impatient and don’t get discouraged. Just choose one account at a time and work on it - the results will be fantastic!

Actually it’s not that scary….

I did a lot of shopping around looking at a couple of different programs for teen credit cards. They are actually gloried debit cards however parents have 100% control over the cards. That way your teen can learn the basics of learn to use credit wisely in a more controlled environment.

Visa Buxx caught my eye first and after reading over their literature - I had to pass. From what I gleaned from their material - they charged a fee for every single charge made on the card - geez that would get expensive and quickly so!

I then looked into UPside Visa - they have some flashy, fun card designs and a couple of different programs. I went with the no monthly fee flat rate $24.95 a year plan and they do not charge fees on any charges made with the card - in fact, your teen can earn points for the charges they make.
This is the card I went with:
Rad Orange Tribal Butterfly Visa for Teens

Want more info? A section that profiles the thoughts parents might have as well as the pros and cons of a teen having a credit card are laid out at Teen Credit Card Review.

Her card will be here in 10 days - I’m depositing the checks she got for the holidays this year and that will be her beginning balance. More will come as she does chores around the house and earns money. I’ll update you how it goes.

The number one reason I see people fail when they are really intent on clearing up their credit reports is because they lose their steam and then it falls by the wayside.

Once you start clearing up your credit report - it’s imperative that you stay on task and see it through. You can’t put it off because it’s really not fun to call and write to collection agencies, it’s not fun to send yet another dispute into the credit bureaus and then there’s always that gloriously fun following up and keeping notes of what you’ve done and what you haven’t.

However, if you skip a step or you lose interest in what you’re doing - you will pay and you will pay in many ways. You will not have cleared up your credit which will cost you in the form of higher interest rates and large penalties for not having a good credit score. You can be denied employment, loans and even insurance if your credit score isn’t good. And those are just the main ways you can be affected.

Try to stay motivated and keep with it. I tell people to start with the smallest issues and the smallest collection accounts first so they can stay motivated. If you go in guns ablazin’ after the biggest derogatory items on your credit report - you can get discouraged because you aren’t seeing any progress. However if you go after a $60 collection on your credit report and negotiate to have it deleted upon payment in full and then you get your copy of your credit report back with a slightly higher credit score and the collection is now gone - it’s easy to see you’ve made progress and you’ll stay motivated to see your credit repair project through until the end.

If you’ve been working on getting your credit cleared up, you know the three credit bureaus by heart (Okay, say ‘em with me…) Equifax, Experian (formerly TRW) and TransUnion. In case you didn’t know, you can add a fourth to the list: Innovis Data Solutions. Innovis is a little different. Unlike the other three credit bureaus, Innovis doesn’t make a business selling consumers’ credit histories to lenders, insurers and potential employers. Innovis does something a little bit different, they specializesin helping creditors compile mailing lists.

If there is adverse information on your Innovis credit report, accurate or not, you could be receiving “bad credit” offers in the mail. Whether you think that’s a big deal or not is up to you - personally, I think inaccurate information is inaccurate information and should ALWAYS be corrected.

Innovis has quietly been a major player with your credit information since the early part of 2001 when the mortgage financing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac required their mortgage servicers to report each borrower’s history of payment to the Houston-based Innovis. Fannie Mae requires mortgage serviceres to notify Innovis of deliquencies and foreclosures and the Freddie Mac requirements entail that every single payment is reported - no matter if it was current or late. Also, the federal government reports to Innovis the payment schedules of any individual that is late with payments to the feds.

Innovis has two types of payments that is offers. One is called “Failsafe” and it is a database that contains the names of consumers who are currently late or have been late on their payments. The other product is named “New Movers” is a monthly compilation of people that have reported a change of address. If your brand new mailbox was stuffed full of advertising mail right after a move, then guess who probably sold your information?

Most people have never heard of Innovis. They are an affiliate of CBC Companies, a business based out of Columbus, Ohio that owns not only Innovis; but also a network of local credit bureaus, a nationwide collection agency and an employee background checking and screening service.

Want to know what Innovis has on you? If you go to their website, you will be directed to “contact your local credit bureau”. However, if you want to get a copy of your Innovis report, write to

Innovis
PO Box 219297
Houston, TX 77218-99297

Don’t let anyone keep records about you unless you know what is in them, even if it’s only mainly for the purpose of mailing you junk mail!

I have been racking my brain trying to come up with a few “extras” for my 14-year old. Teens are just hard to buy for and mine is no exception. She’s a wonderful kid and I’m immensely proud of her and she honestly doesn’t ask for much so I like to make gift giving times very special.

I had looked at Visa cards for teens last year thinking one might make a great way to teach my kiddo a little further about financial responsibility - she just didn’t seem ready and I wasn’t really thrilled about having a yearly fee for the card that I found buried down in the fine print. She’s matured so much over the past year - I think she’s ready and so I did some research and I found some cool cards just for teens with NO yearly fees, here’s the skinny:

• Reloadable prepaid Visa® card for teens,
  managed by parents.
• No activation fee, no monthly or yearly fee.
• Created for families’ needs with full parental control.
• Quick, easy online application.
• Free money loading with direct deposit.
• Accepted anywhere Visa debit cards are accepted,
  including abroad and online.

And they look pretty cool too - check these out

Cool Black Visa for Teens

Rad Orange Visa for Teens

Guitar Hero Visa for Teens

Anime Visa for Teens

Since these are debit cards - they don’t report to a credit bureau or help or hinder credit scores - however they are a wonderful way to see if you have a saver or a spendthrift and help your teen learn good spending habits now instead of winding up as a college student that went credit card crazy and has $40,000 worth of credit card debt when they leave college.

The people that work at the credit bureau are just that; they are people just like you. Some are happy in their lives , some have crappy personal lives that spill over into their work, some have good attitudes and some have bad attitudes - why am I telling you this and what does it mean to you?

It means sometimes the person that is handling your credit disputes won’t try as hard as they need to, there can be a lot of reasons why - and none of them are beneficial to you.

I had a personal situation a few years ago where I had a medical collection that was absolutely erroneous and the bureau said it was verified as mine - however THE COLLECTION AGENCY WAS OUT OF BUSINESS!

There’s no way it was verified and having already done my own legwork to verify it (or rather not verify it) I knew I was a victim of someone else’s laziness, ineptness or just plain not caring.

So what do you do? You challenge it that’s what you do. You’re entitled to know exactly where the verifying information came from upon written request and that’s exactly what I did. Lo’ and behold - the collection was immediately removed when I asked for verification.

The moral of the story is this - if you feel an account hasn’t been perhaps as deeply researched as you believe it should - CHALLENGE IT!

Okay, so you’ve gotten a copy of your credit bureau report and you’re ready to start disputing items.

First of all, don’t outright lie in your dispute letters. It will get your account red-flagged within the credit bureau as a chronic complainer. Instead, attack your credit bureau dents and dings from another approach. Remember this, any item that is appearing on your credit report MUST be verified. Every piece of information must be verified. If it can not be verified - it must be removed and it doesn’t get any more simple than that.

Collection agencies are notorious for “re-aging” accounts. This means they basically make up an open date when they start collecting on an account and it makes it actually stay on your credit report longer than it should.

Ask that a collection account be fully verified.
Ask if the agency purchased the collection outright and if not, the opening date should shown as the open date of the account with a separate date of when the account was placed for collection.

Ask for exact dates of late payments and do the math yourself when you get the results. Often late pays at 15-20 days are often reported as over 30 days late by many computers and these should not be reflected on your credit bureau report. Remember, it’s only 30 days late and above.

Keep your dispute letter short and sweet and go straight to the point. The person investigating your claim doesn’t really care that your ex-husband with whom you have the joint JC Penny’s card ran off with your brother’s ex-sister in law two years ago and ran up the charge cards. They just want to check to see if you’re on the account and if you have a legal liability to pay. In a case like that, if you really feel you never signed an account application, ask that the original application is pulled to verify it and if it can’t be found - the account may very well be deleted.

Those are just a few tips - more will be coming - and feel free to post a question or a comment - I’ll do my best to answer you.

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