Welcome to the First edition of our Blog Carnival of Credit, Loan and Mortgage. I am really thankful to all of those who participated and submitted your articles. I really enjoyed reading them all. This carnival provided me an opportunity to discover some great blogs related to personal finance.
I hope you enjoy reading these articles.
Before you start boosting your credit score, you need to know the basics. You need to know what a credit score is, how it is developed, and why it is important to you in your everyday life.
Lenders certainly know what sort of information they can get from a credit score, but knowing this information yourself can help you better see how your everyday financial decisions impact the financial picture lenders get of you through your credit score. A few simple tips are all you need to know to understand the basic principles:
If you are going to improve your credit score, then logic has it that you must understand what your credit score is and how it works. Without this information, you won’t be able to very effectively improve your score because you won’t understand how the things you do in daily life affect your score.
If you don’t understand how your credit score works, you will also be at the mercy of any company that tries to tell you how you can improve your score – on their terms and at their price.
In general, your credit score is a number that lets lenders know how much of a credit risk you are. The credit score is a number, usually between 300 and 850, that lets lenders know how well you are paying off your debts and how much of a credit risk you are.
In general, the higher your credit score, the better credit risk you make and the more likely you are to be given credit at great rates. Scores in the low 600s and below will often give you trouble in finding credit, while scores of 720 and above will generally give you the best interest rates out there. However, credit scores are a lot like GPAs or SAT scores from college days – while they give others a quick snapshot of how you are doing, they are interpreted by people in different ways. Some lenders put more emphasis on credit scores than others.
Some lenders will work with you if you have credit scores in the 600s, while others offer their best rates only to those creditors with very high scores indeed. Some lenders will look at your entire credit report while others will accept or reject your loan application based solely on your credit score.
The credit score is based on your credit report, which contains a history of your past debts and repayments. Credit bureaus use computers and mathematical calculations to arrive at a credit score from the information contained in your credit report.
Each credit bureau uses different methods to do this (which is why you will have different scores with different companies) but most credit bureaus use the FICO system. FICO is an acronym for the credit score calculating software offered by Fair Isaac Corporation company. This is by far the most used software since the Fair Isaac Corporation developed the credit score model used by many in the financial industry and is still considered one of the leaders in the field.
You need to cut down your monthly expenses and live frugally if you ever want to get out of debt. Let’s assume you have a $20,000 in credit card debt and you current minimum payment is around $500 per month. Unless you really don’t want to pay your credit card bills at all. You have to pay it in full before you can cancel your credit card.
Let’s say you have $14,000 in credit card debt and your current minimum payment is $350. At 21% with a minimum payment of 2.5% it will take you 542 months to get rid of your debt. In that time, you will pay more than $32,000 in interest. this is not at all funny. but this is how this works.
If you keep paying a fixed amount of $350 dollars (which is your current minimum payment),It will take you 70 months to be rid of your debt. In that time, you will pay $10,290.27 in interest. Still Its unacceptable.
However, If you manage to reduce expenses by $200 each month and apply that amount to your credit card’s minimum payment, then each month you can payback $550. this way, It will only take you 34 months (3 years) to get rid of all your debt. during this time, you will pay only $4,692.23 in interest. this is also crappy but better than 542(45 years) ye and 70 months(6 years) and you will save some where between $6,000 to $28,000 in your interest payments.
Best course of action in this situation is to transfer your debt to a low interest credit card or apply for a debt consolidation loan
If you still doubt in what I say, You can use this Minimum payment calculator to find out how much money you will be wasting by not paying off your credit card balance as quickly as possible.
Indeed, there is no feeling like getting out of debt. Its always better than watching cable tv or dining out with friend. You will get more joy out of these activities when you are debt free.
Popular media is painting a very bleak economic outlook. It is a time when people are confused about their savings and economic future. There are also people out there who see every challenge as an opportunity to make money. It is like Forex market to them. You can make money both ways, up or down. We have listed below the reasons why people think that this is best time in history to make lot’s of money and become filthy rich.
If you have ever tried to lose weight then probably you know how difficult it is to improve your credit score. It is not something you can do quickly. If you try to raise your credit score based on bad advice, you must be prepared for these quick-fix efforts to backfire. If you ask me to put all of the advice in one sentence, I would probably say “Manage your credit responsibly”. It is indeed a uphill task to improve your credit score once it is down. Still following the tips below is very crucial to get your bad credit back on track.
Nothing ruins your credit report like a delinquent payment or a collection. In 70% cased this is the major negative factor in people’s credit report.
If you missed one or two payments, take corrective action as soon as possible. Longer you delay your payment, worst will be your credit score.
If you pay off your bills after they go to collection. It might be too late. Even if you pay, this will stay on your credit report for next seven years.
Boomerangs are L-shaped objects that return back to the person who throw them in any direction. Credit Cards are made of rigid and virtually indestructible plastics and hence they are a good candidate for the job of making boomerangs. A quick look at this Wikipedia Article will give you a fair idea of boomerang basics.
This is much easier for all of us if we can explain the process with images. so i have put up some before and after images of a cute little boomerang made out of a stores card. It is more enjoyable when you do it with a valid card. expired credit cards are not that much fun to play with. leave them for your children to play with.
A few days ago my wallet was feeling a little too bulky. It was not because it was stuffed with cash. It was filled with plastic; credit cards as we call it. So I thought it was a good idea to cancel a few of them that I hadn’t been using for a while. I would like to share with you how I canceled one of my credit cards.
How to cancel your credit card
Although I have experience of Applying for credit cards but this was my first experience of canceling one. Apply is easy, canceling a card is harder. Have you ever tried to cancel your credit card?. Or close a bank account. Or Tried to terminate your Internet Service?.
Most of these companies try to make it very hard for you to quit. They put you through lots of exit interviews and throw you to their “customer retention specialists”. These hogs keep on making calls to you and ask you teasing questions the list of which might be endless. They even try to talk you out of your decision. Thy use anything to achieve their target.
They question your sanity, try to bring in moral questions that you feel guilty about canceling that credit card or whatever service you are trying to quit.
This morning I had a similar experience. I have an Citibank Visa card that I am trying to cancel. I have no balance on this account, so if thought that is a good idea to call them and tell them that I no longer need their service and that would be it. but that was only what “I” thought.. I was nothing like it. Read the full story
