Credit reports can be very confusing to read at times. There is a lot of information to decipher, codes that may not always make sense, etc. There are some basic things to know that may help when you are looking at a credit report. While there are several different scoring models available for each bureau, … Read more
A “Rescore” is the updating of information on a credit report at the bureau level in an expedited manner. It is not credit repair and it is not a manipulation of the credit report. Eventually the changes that are made through a rescore would be reported at the bureau level by the creditor. A rescore … Read more
In this day and age everyone has been taught at least a few ways to protect their identities against theft. But what about your children’s identities? Social security numbers are issued at birth and since kids usually don’t use them until they are older, they are a prime target for identity theft. According to the … Read more
The amount of consumers that file bankruptcy each year continue to decline since new laws went into effect in 2005 tightening the requirements for a consumer to be able to file. The numbers that still do file, however, are a bit staggering. In 2016 there were 800,000 bankruptcy filings. Statistics show that 60% of bankruptcies … Read more
So you’ve found out you were one of the 143 million people who were possibly compromised by the Equifax breach. What exactly does that mean and what should you do now? What it means is that hackers stole names, addresses, social security numbers and even driver’s license information. In some cases all this information was … Read more
FICO scores can be confusing to say the least. In reality a person has many different FICO (Fair Isaac Company) scores depending on what they are applying for and the codes that are being used to pull the credit report. What about when we pull our own credit report? Are we getting real FICO scores? … Read more
Revolving balances play an important role in your credit score calculation. The total of your revolving debt makes up about 30% of your credit score. Balances on installment loans don’t have any where near the impact on credit scores as revolving balances do. While having a revolving balance or two can help your credit scores, … Read more
Your loan officer has pulled your credit and your scores are just a little short of where they need to be. He thinks there are possibilities for an improvement so he runs a “What If Simulator” to see what could possibly be done to get the scores a little higher. Most of the time, this … Read more
You’ve sold your home, paid off the car and all your credit cards and even closed most of them. You are completely debt free! This is great…right? Well, not when it comes to your credit score. Believe it or not, being completely debt free can actually hurt your credit scores. While it may feel wonderful … Read more
“Synthetic Identity Theft” now makes up 80% of all ID thefts in the country at this time. Never heard of it? A lot of people haven’t. What is it? A thief takes one piece of your true identity (usually a social security number) and then combines it with false information such as a different name, … Read more