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Top cities for savings September 13, 2006

Posted by Administrator in : Saving, credit , 53 comments

Here is a nice little article about the ever growing rate of debt that we Americans put ourselves in.  Its hard to imagine the average household is $7,200.00 in revolving debt!  Just goes to show you we live in a world of visa and mastercard for sure.

Here is the link to the article…

http://biz.yahoo.com/special/pf091206_article1.htm…

Article from my local Newspaper August 21, 2006

Posted by Administrator in : Miscellaneous, credit , add a comment

My local paper here in Raleigh, North Carolina is the News&Observer. They published a good little article today on personal finance. The article is title “Building Credit Quickly”. The News and Observer usually has some pretty good articles about personal finance. Tomorrow I will post another about a story of “What’s in peoples wallets?”

For nearly a year, I have watched as a closenews and observer family friend and her husband put off plans to buy their dream home because of a low credit score.

Instead of house shopping, they are renting and waiting.

I was starting to think that there was little they could do, besides paying their bills on time and waiting for their score to rebound. In the meantime, they won’t get credit for many typical payments, such as rent and utilities.

A growing trend, alternative credit reporting — which I hinted at in last week’s column — could help them. It’s a way for recurring monthly payments, such as rent and insurance payments, to be reported to credit bureaus. Those types of payments generally have been ignored by creditors.

Many people are familiar with the three major credit bureaus — Equifax, Experian and Trans-union. However, there are a number of smaller credit bureaus in the country, said Norm Magnuson, spokesman for the Consumer Data Industry Association.

“They collect information on checking account activity, overdraft protection, payday loans and other things that are not reported to major credit bureaus,” he said.

Monthly payments such as rent, child care and phone bills can also be added to some of these reports. Alternative credit reporting has been around for a while, but it has only recently started to grab the attention of major lenders.

With so many Americans saturated with credit card debt and credit offers, lenders are on the prowl for new customers, and they are exploring ways to prove potential customers’ credit worthiness. Also, people with little or no credit are looking for ways to show that they do pay their bills.

Anyone can get payment history information reported to one these credit bureaus, but the process is complicated.

Giselle Johnson found that out last year when she tried to establish credit. She spent months researching how she could report the information. With the data she gathered during that process, she started Renters Helpers in Raleigh, which helps people establish their credit worthiness through nontraditional means.

Johnson has helped a half-dozen people collect information about their monthly payments for utilities, rent, child care, insurance and other expenses, and report them to a credit bureau.

If you are making these payments on time each month, this information could help build your credit score. A higher score could help in a number of ways, such as allowing you to get low-interest credit cards, a competitive mortgage and cheaper insurance premiums.

But hold on, before you get too excited: There’s work and money involved.

Credit card companies and financial institutions have the computer systems in place to automatically report payment histories. Landlords, utility companies and child-care centers typically do not.

To get this information into your credit file, you must verify that you made those payments. For a fee starting at $99, Johnson takes the data and uploads it to online credit bureau PayRentBuildCredit (prbc.com). Once that’s done, Johnson says that customers may see a dramatic increase in their scores within six months.

When Johnson moved to the U.S. two years ago to marry her husband, her credit score was zero. It has jumped to more than 600 since she started reporting her monthly payments in December. That’s still short of the median FICO score of 723, which is calculated by Fair Isaac & Co. But it’s high enough to get approvals from some lenders.

The key to making this work: When you apply for credit, make sure to ask the lender to pull credit reports from all credit bureaus, not just the three major ones.

At least 75 percent of the U.S. population has accumulated enough credit history to generate a credit score from data reported to the three major credit bureaus, according to Fair Isaac. But the other 25 percent, or about 54 million people, has little or no credit history, and hence, no score.

Lenders are slowly turning to an untapped market of consumers who have little or no credit, which includes the growing immigrant population, young adults and recent graduates, and people who simply prefer to pay cash.

Several years ago, some of the big financial institutions went to Fair Isaac to find out if there was any way to gather data on these people and create a credit score that would predict their ability to pay their bills.

Fair Isaac did extensive research to find companies that collect nontraditional financial data in large quantities that could be used to help calculate a credit score. It has identified fewer than a dozen such repositories, Fair Isaac spokesman Craig Watts said.

They include groups that keep tabs on such things as how often a person uses overdraft protection and the number of checks they order each year. There are also groups that keep records on people who order books and music through book clubs, Watts said.

With that data, Fair Isaac is able to calculate a FICO expansion score, using the same analytical system it uses to calculate traditional FICO scores, which are widely used by major creditors.

But the program is in its early stages. Fair Isaac has been working with utility companies and rent-payment repositories to help build a national database that it can use to help substantiate consumers’ credit histories.

However, it faces two major hurdles. One is that only about half the states, including North Carolina, allow utilities to report payment histories to credit bureaus. Also, the rental market is so fragmented — there are thousands of landlords — that it’s difficult to establish a central data center that can collect those payment records each month.

“Obviously, we would like to find a national repository for rental and utility payments, but currently, neither exists,” Watts said.

PayRentBuildCredit has started a national record of payment histories, but it hasn’t created a large enough database for Fair Isaac to use, Watts said. “They have got a big challenge to create a bona fide record base, but we have been keeping tabs on it,” he said.

Hundreds of national lenders have used or tested the FICO expansion score. Based on that, Watts estimates that Fair Isaac will be ready to start providing consumers with their FICO expansion scores next year.

In addition to Fair Isaac, a number of other groups and companies are fighting to get alternative credit histories reported to credit bureaus. Among them is Experian. The company has been meeting with state leaders, utilities and telecommunications providers to help work out a way to report consumer payment activity.

“The vast majority of people do pay their bills on time,” said Lara DeSoto, a spokeswoman for Experian. “That would be great if others could see that.”

Experian has worked with several nontraditional payment-data repositories to help generate scores for people who have no credit. It can get information, for instance, on how well you are handling your checking account, such as how cash flows in and out, the number of checks returned and other information.

“We can show you have responsibly used your checking account and run statistical analysis to predict future information,” DeSoto said.

Let’s hope that with alternative credit reporting, my friends’ home-shopping future will be much brighter.


Good tip from a newsletter.. August 14, 2006

Posted by Administrator in : credit , 11 comments

I recieved a good tip from a newsletter I subscribe to for free from Transunion.  Transunion is one of the big 3 credit reporting agencys.  The tip is asked in the form of question.

Dear Audrey,

Is it true that if you use a credit card and pay it off each month, it never gets on your credit history? And therefore won’t help you build credit?

Thanks.

Lois W.
Crown Point, Ind.

Dear Lois,

While many people believe you have to have a balance in order to build their credit, this notion is completely untrue.

Paying off a credit card balance each month is one of the best ways to build your credit because it shows creditors you can handle your credit responsibly. Plus, it will look great on your credit report when you’re being reviewed for a larger loan, like a mortgage.

By checking your credit report often, you can make sure your timely payments are reflected in your balances. You can also look for errors that could potentially damage your credit score, such as accounts that do not belong to you.

Hopefully this could help someone out if they think they need to keep a balance.

Taking on new debt but im still going strong… August 9, 2006

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Well I am not proud to announce this but I incurred some new debt this week.  I bought a new laptop!  I have been wanting one for a while but wanted to hold off for a while too.  But since my desktop crashed on me this week it pretty much made my decision a little bit easier.  But I really love my laptop and this is my first post to my blog using this laptop.

I have already made adjustments to my budget to pay off this debt as quickly as possible.  Luckily my credit card has 0% for 6 months and I will have it paid off in October.  Sure it takes a little hit to my savings but I think you have to learn that sometimes things like this happen and you have to roll with the punches.  I will post a picture of my laptop soon…

New Credit Card but why? July 28, 2006

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Ok so I am getting a new credit card through my bank. Why? Well for one is to raise my credit score. I will have a higher limit than the cards I received when I was younger. When lenders show they are comfortable giving you a higher credit limit it can improve your credit score as long as you don’t max out the card which I don’t plan on doing. I will be making two big purchases as well with this card but I am taking advantage of the 0% interest for 6 months and I will have that payed off before the 6 months. Hey its same as cash why pay it all at once? I will be buying a laptop which I need badly, and an xbox360 which I don’t need so badly but I have held out since they released back in November. After that I am not making any purchases with this card unless its gas or something.

Since I have been shopping for a good deal on a laptop I have found a few good sites for catching some deals. One of them is dealcatcher.com

I know I work for Dell part-time and I would buy a laptop from them considering the discount I would get but I just really like HP’s 17 inch laptop. I really like the numeric keypad being on there as well as the lightscribe cd/dvd burner combo drive. The Dell 17 inch has no numerical keypad and does not have lightscribe.