Advice on Credit Repair ?

Question

Nathan Gesner · Answer

Talk to a lender. They can run your credit, see where you currently are, and give you advice on how to clean things up.

I'm not a fan of a credit repair service. They make money by repairing  your credit, which tells me you're paying for it somehow. I would rather see you get creative with paying off what you've got.

When I married my wife, I had no debt and she had a lot. We agreed to pay it off and I saw credit card companies were offering 0% interest on balance transfers for 6-12 months. I opened a card, transferred all the balances to it, and started paying as much as I could every month. When I had just a few months remaining, I opened a new card and transferred the balance to that one. I paid off all the debts in about 14 months without paying any interest!

If you are serious about this, take a part-time job or sacrifice some of your luxuries and attack this like your life depended on it!

Jim K. · Answer

@Caleb Heimsoth

The day will come when the courage of real estate investors everywhere fails and the flaked pork patty that was broken shall be formed again!

Exavier Hamilton · Answer

When it comes to credit only you can repair it.  What credit repair companies do is basically pretend to be you and dispute your past accounts.  They'll check for dated info, accounts, and errors in efforts to have them removed.  Upon removal your score will increase.  Credit Karma gives you limited information and a Vantage Score which is why it's free.

It's made solely to give you a glimpse of your credit history and what you need to do in order to fix it.  You can go to creditchecktotal.com to get your actual FICO scores and a tri-merge credit report.  If you want a full report visit annualcreditreport.com your awarded a free full report from all there bureaus per year.  You can then use those reports to login to the bureaus dispute website and begin cleaning your report.

For collections under $500 just pay them and you'll see the credit boost immediately in most cases.

Jim K. · Answer

Credit repair companies are also, in my opinion, a rip-off.

@Nathan G.'s strategy was very straightforward.

There are plenty of credit cards out there that offer 0% interest on balance transfers for 6-12 months. Some go for longer than 12 months, but you have to have exceptional credit to get them. You often pay a set fee to transfer a balance over to a new credit card, a small amount somewhere around 3-5%.

After that, you can transfer the balance again to a second card, and still pay far less in transfer fees with these new cards than you would pay in interest charges with old cards.

This assumes, of course, that you or someone you know has a credit score that is good enough to qualify for these cards. There have been times in my life when I did not.

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Here's one suggestion: I see you standing in your profile photo in front of a hot yellow car of the variety than tends to get speeding tickets, and this is not the first time we've seen something like this on BiggerPockets.

Can you sell the car and buy yourself a much less expensive car for your daily usage? I could see a lot of scenarios where the money you would get from the sale and the money you would save in insurance and gas costs could help someone in your position out.

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I had exactly the same problem you did a while back. I also followed a very successful strategy, that of Nathan G.'s wife. I found somebody who was MUCH better with handling her money than I was with mine and I married her. This credit repair strategy has been remarkably effectual in helping me work through my problematic relationship with money.

I'm all about the options, you see.

95% of the millionaire households in America are run by a married couple or a widow/widower. Successfully building and maintaining wealth is overwhelmingly a couple's activity rather than a single person's by a ratio of 20:1. It's very hard to argue with that kind of data.

Paul Paquin · Answer

Hey, before you use a credit repair company, try repairing your credit on your own.  Here's exactly how I went from having a 600 credit score, to now having well over an 800 credit score. If you have any particular questions, I'd love to help. As far as a credit repair program, if you decide to join one make sure there's a guarantee in the contract, saying that if results are not achieved you won't have to pay. Make sure the company has been in business for over 5 years and has an A+ BBB rating. And lastly, check the reviews on the company. You can check reviews on Google, TrustedCompanyReviews.com, Yelp.com, and on BBB.org, all very reputable places to check reviews on a company.

Chris LumLee · Answer

I'm not particularly a fan of services. What I would do- not trying to push, just giving an alternative- is read up on how to repair credit. And it's usually the same stuff anyway like pay your bill on time, lower your credit card usage, stuff like that. And in time when you fix your numbers your score will jump quick.

Melvin List · Answer

@Josh Chavez do not use Consumer Credit Counseling!  Lenders look at that like you just filed a BK.

Advice on Credit Repair ?

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