Credit Scores are important to track because of the need to know where you are before you go looking for a loan for your new home or a new car. Once you establish your lines of credit, credit cards and mortgage, car loan or student loan, don’t disturb the flow of things. The history is more important.

As you go along, it would be good to check it once a year to see how things are going but if you need to watch it more often, say if you are working on correcting problems on your credit report or need to watch it improve for a specific reason, like wanting to buy a new home and you need a specific credit score, then getting a monitoring service might be a good idea. Remember that you can pull your credit reports free once a year from http://www.AnnualCreditReport.com. But to get your credit score will require you to pay for a service. We recommend http://www.MyFICO.com because they are the more accurate for a consumer credit score. All others are “simulated credit scores” and seem to get a credit score that is higher than what you would get if you went shopping for a loan. It doesn’t make sense unless you consider that they are trying to make you feel good. But that doesn’t make sense when you find out that your score isn’t any good. So, it must be for money and the greedy nature of big business. It’s not really a service at all.

However, MyFICO.com is from the Fair Isaac Corporation who developed the credit scoring system and their credit scores are accurate. You can get a credit score from just 2 of the credit bureaus for about 20% less if you google search “myfico coupon”.  Cost would be around $22 for the 2 scores.  Unfortunately, Experian thinks they are too good for FICO and won’t let you get the score through them anymore.

Credit is a tricky subject because we don’t have the secret key that unlocks the proprietary information or formula of the credit bureaus and Fair Isaac Corporation. They created the scoring modules that are in use today to create credit scores on the information in your credit file. However, through exhaustive research and intensive study, we have come to see the secrets and tricks the credit bureaus use and understand how it works… almost.

Because there are hundreds of factors involved in creating a scoring module and how it affects the information in your credit file, it is difficult to ascribe a perfect number of points to what a tip or strategy will do to increase or decrease your credit score. However, this much we absolutely do know… that if you do follow the tips and strategies in this book then you will see a rise or fall in credit points depending on if the action is a good action or a bad action on your part.

Take heed to read the tips and strategies and relate them to your own credit file and the information contained in it. Read it, get to know it and then read the strategies to use to get your scores going up instead of down. This will help you get the highest scores possible and create an opportunity for a great financial future . Now, go and get start and remember, that Every Point Counts!

There are 5 areas of importance in the scoring modules of the credit bureaus.

They are:

1 – Bill payment history – 35% of your score is attributed to this section.

2 – Account Balances – 30% of your score is attributed to this section.

3 – Length of time opened – 15% of your score is attributed to this section.

4 – New Accounts – 10% of your score is attributed to this section.

5 – Types of credit used – 10% of your score is attributed to this section.

Terms:

Creditor = the company that extended the credit to you.

Payee = the company that you make the payments to.

Payer = this is you, the person that makes the payment to the company (Payee) that you owe.

A mistake on your credit report can cost you literally thousands of dollars, especially in this economy. So what can you expect from a big credit bureau if you ask them to investigate and correct the error?

What a great question and one that Spence Wharton, an NCF consultant shot me recently. Smart Money magazine did an article and one that I thought merits your attention. Just click the link below?

http://www.smartmoney.com/Spending/Rip-offs/Why-The-Credit-Bureaus-Cannot-Get-it-Right/

People ask me all the time how can they, the credit bureaus, do this or that? Why would they not delete this right away? How can they get away with this?

You’ll read about when testifying before Congress, one CEO of an independent Arizona credit bureau likened the dispute process to “having an IRS audit, brain surgery, getting a tooth pulled or going to your own funeral.

So, take a few moments with a hot cup of coffee or perhaps over lunch today and find out some facts on how the credit bureaus basically snub their noses at the average Joe consumer. How they abuse folks just like you and I.

This is just a taste of the battles we fight every day for our members!

Be Bold!

Herschel

Reporting Dates are the dates that the creditor will report your account status to the credit bureaus. This is a very critical date if you are over extended on your credit or if you are someone that needs high credit scores to do your job, such as Real Estate Investors or others who use credit on a regular basis for their work. A Debt to Credit Ratio can be reduced so as to cause a higher credit score if you make your payments to the creditor before they report to the credit bureaus. You can find the reporting date by looking into the fine print (get a strong magnifying glass) and reading when they report to the credit bureaus. Most will not indicate this, so you can usually assume the reporting date will be just after they add the interest to your account. You could call and ask, but I find that they still won’t give it to you or don’t know. A rule of thumb is to make your payment 1 week after the statement has arrived to make your payment then. It will arrive in plenty of time to be posted before it is reported to the credit bureaus. Refer to #18 for further information