Category Archives: Credit Repair
A Mortgage With My Credit?
You don’t have to be an economist to know that buying real estate property in Florida is risky. At least one hurricane or tropical storm makes landfall somewhere in the Sunshine State every year. Sometimes a second storm hits before property owners are even finished repairing the damage from the first storm. Some insurance… Read More »
How Affordable Are Affordable Housing Units?
Economists seem to live in their own world, far from the financial struggles that the rest of us live with on a daily basis. For example, economists swear by the avalanche method of debt repayment, where you devote all the extra money in your budget to the debt with the highest interest rate, even… Read More »
New Opportunities for First-Time Mortgage Applicants
The wealth gap only seems to be widening. An increasing number of residential real estate purchases are investment properties, bought by people who already own another house as their primary residence, or else by companies where the profits go to people who own mansions that you could never dream of affording. Meanwhile, it only… Read More »
Your Vantage 4.0 Credit Score
Your credit score is only one of many reminders that working people can rarely catch a break in life, even as the rich get richer for doing absolutely nothing. How many times have you been turned down for loans simply because you did not have enough credit history? It didn’t matter that you always… Read More »
Credit Utilization Blues
Credit utilization, which is how much of your available credit you have used, is one of the factors in your credit score. It is also known as debt to credit ratio, because credit reporting bureaus do not measure it purely by the face value of your outstanding credit card balances. Instead, they look at… Read More »
Why So Many Credit Checks?
Several stories in Greek mythology warn of looking too soon at the prize you are about to obtain. In the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, Orpheus travels to the Underworld to rescue his wife Eurydice and bring her back to the world of the living. Hades agrees to release Eurydice to go back to… Read More »
What’s So Great About an Awesome Credit Score?
If it is any consolation, people whose financial situation is beyond your wildest dreams probably spend as much time wishing they had more money as you do. Money does not buy freedom from stress about money. “Enough” is in the eye of the beholder, and realizing this is the first step to gratitude and… Read More »
What If Student Loan Policy Changes Have Tanked Your Credit Score?
The COVID-19 pandemic brought plenty of uncertainty, but for student loan borrowers, the pause of student loan payments was a source of temporary relief. If you borrowed money to attend college, then as soon as the guests had left your graduation party, the worries about repaying your student loans set in. Even though student… Read More »
Is Positive Rent Reporting Too Good to Be True?
The credit reporting bureaus must have missed the memo about “positive vibes only.” If all the other soccer moms have used their last ounce of strength to keep a smile on their faces for the duration of soccer practice, they cannot expect to get any relief when they log onto the Zoom meeting for… Read More »
Credit Limit Increases
It is an unpleasant truth that the lending of money ultimately benefits lenders more than it benefits borrowers. Lenders have less to lose when they choose not to lend than borrowers do when they choose not to borrow. If a lender doesn’t lend, they keep the principal of the non-loan and only lose out… Read More »