Here is the link to the article…

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

Now I still increased my Networth in key categories such as my checking, savings, 401k, and my Sharebuilder Brokerage.

• This month displayed is August and all percentage increases and decreases are from June to July.

Some key figures are:

• My cash or cash equivalent increased 76.60%
• My investments increased 31.30%
• My capital one Credit card is now payed off!!

Just a quick little “video search” on google and you can find pretty much whatever you want.  Well I wanted some more people to find out about sogoinvest.com the discount online brokerage where trading stocks are at maximum $3.00 a trade and yes that is real time trades as well.  This is an interview with the founder of sogoinvest enjoy.

A list of Millionaires in the Making

• Heres the link to the story about the 24 year old from raleigh
• The Savers
• The Sensible Spenders
• Paying yourself first
• Cash Only couple

I’m not sure what my specific tagline would be for one of these articles.  Maybe it would just be “Young and Planning” or what I feel like right now is “overworked but love to save”.  What would your tagline be?

For nearly a year, I have watched as a close 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.

A map of Raleigh, North Carolina

There is so many different products I have been thinking about…

ink jet cartridges
cables
xbox 360 accesories
bluetooth products
and many more… The hard thing is finding out how to get these items. So far its a long process that I am still looking into. If anyone has any suggestions please post them on here!

Dear Audrey,

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.

You can’t electronically withdrawal funds unless you do the following.
- The first step is that you have to add a banking account by printing a PDF file and fill it out with a voided check and send it in.
- Then once your account is verified you have to initiate a withdrawl by once again printing out a pdf file and sending it in.

here is the fine print posted on there site:

This is very annoying if you make a lot of transfers to external accounts. This is the only beef so far I have with Sogoinvest.