Debt Elimination Success Seminar
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Section 1
A Look at Debt
History of Debt
Credit Card History
Current State of Debt
How You Got Into Debt
Good Debt Bad Debt
Business vs. Personal Debt
Section 2 Dealing With Your Money
The Two Step Plan
Doing The Two-Step
Step One
Step Two
The Paths Out of Debt
1- Create a Debt Payment Plan
2- Neogtiate Better Rates & Terms
a.Consolidation Loans
b.Consumer Credit Counseling Services
3- Negotiate Lump-Sum Settlements
4- Bankruptcy
5- The Easy Way
6- Win $1,000,000
Living Debt-Free
Manage Your Money
Make More Money
Save Money
SameMoney-MoreFun
Stay Debt-Free
You as a Business
Section 3 Dealing With Your Creditors
Alerts/Scams
The Credit Industry
Credit Industry
The Fine Print
The Secondary Debt Market
The Debt Collection Process
Original Creditor
The Charge-Off
Collection Agency
Legal Problems
Dirty Creditor Tricks
Dealing with Debt Collectors
Dealing with Debt Collectors
Statute of Limitations
Cease and Desist Letter
Section 4
The Credit Report
The Credit Report
Credit Score
Credit Repair
Section 5
Dealing With Yourself
The Critical Factor
The Art of Prosperity
The End of Failure
Prosperity Coaching
Section 6
Kids and Money
Kids and Money
How to Pay for College
Section 7
Debt Information
Bookstore
Debt Facts
Radio Show
Resources
About Us
Privacy Policy
Site Map
If you find this information helpful I ask you to contribute to help me help more people. You can contribute through PayPal by clicking on this button Or you can mail in your contribution.
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Host: Tom Allen
Guest: Andrea Villarreal from Better Scores Better Rates
Segment 1
Tom: I’m Tom Allen and I’m speaking with Andrea Villarreal of Better Scores Better Rates. She helps people save money on loans by improving their credit scores. Andrea, reading a credit report can seem like reading a foreign language. Why did you get involved in helping people understand and improve their credit reports?
Andrea: Well I got involved doing credit repair and dealing with the FICO and the credit bureau because I was actually in trouble myself.
Tom: Ah, like most of us, some personal experience.
Andrea: Absolutely. I had gotten out of a marriage and had a very small child and no child support and I was going back to college, and so I worked in a building as a receptionist, oddly enough while I was in college, went door to door to every attorney in my building and said, hey, I need extra work, I can work after work, I can learn and I met an attorney and he did credit bureau work and that’s how I got started. He paid me per investigation and I kind of needed to fix my own credit and then it ended up being my career
Tom: Wow and how long ago was that?
Andrea: It was seven and a half years ago.
Tom: So you have a quite a bit of experience.
Andrea: Oh absolutely. And like I said, people call and they tend to be very embarrassed about the things that happened in the past. Or you credit is such a hush-hush thing you’ll find out more about someone before you find out I’m in credit card debt of I’ve had some major issues in the past.
Tom: It’s one of our deepest hidden secrets isn’t it?
Andrea: It’s very, very shameful there’s a lot of shame associated with it or having credit issues from the past.
Tom: So what is it that you do specifically at Better Score Better Rates?
Andrea: Well at Better Scores Better Rates I always say I do have a set cliental that I deal with a lot of real estate investors or people who are going to purchase their first home or refinance a home and have had some issues happen in the past. Or they’re people who, they constantly buy real estate. But what I do is look at the credit report, create an analysis and say, look here’s what I can do, here’s what I can’t do, here’s what you need to do on your own as a consumer and that’s kind of what I was going to talk with everyone about today.
Tom: Okay
Andrea: The free advice that everybody calls me for.
Tom: Alright. We like free advice.
Andrea: Absolutely. Because as I always say I am on the higher end of the scale a particular type of clientele that come to me but the information that I have is something that the average consumer, one shouldn’t have to pay a credit repair agency to do, two or pay a specialist like me to find out or even buy the book. It’s just simple things that the credit reporting agencies really don’t put out there for the average consumer that can really help them. It’s not going to give them two or three hundred points but it can take you anywhere from five to a hundred points pretty quickly.
Tom: And for anyone who is wanting to refinance their mortgage, looking to get a loan or for anyone who just wants a better credit report it’s a good idea to do some simple things but of course if your going to be refinancing, raising your credit score can literally save your thousands of dollars.
Andrea: Oh absolutely. Or a first time home purchase. You have people who don’t own a home and they’ve worked really, really hard and unfortunately they don’t have ten, twenty thousand to put down on a home. It’s a difference between having a 600 credit score and 625 credit score is the difference between being able to purchase to a home with no money down or not, or getting the 0% interest or your car, or refinancing your home. It gets to the point where fifteen points can sometimes be enough to push you into the next category.
Tom: So it sounds like to me what you’re saying is if you’re going to be buying a home if your going to be applying for a real loan, the first thing you need to do before your even talk to a mortgage broker perhaps even before you go out and look for properties is look at your credit report to see if there’s some things you can do to raise your score up.
Andrea: Oh absolutely that’s the first thing you should do. But people don’t realize that they contact a company and they think well they’ll pull my credit and they’ll let me know what it looks like, that’s a big mistake. Every credit inquiry is going to cost you a few points. Don’t waste the points that are so precious to you can I know on my web site on a lot a web sites they offer forms that you can mail into the bureau get some free credit reports sent to you that don’t affect your score. I’m a huge fan of
myfico.com
I think that’s the best online place to purchase your credit report.
Tom: Excellent. Speaking of your web site what is your web site address?
Andrea: My web site is www.bsbr.com, Better Scores Better Rates I took the first initial.
Tom: Got it. BSBR for Better Scores Better Rates
Andrea: And if you click on tools I have the form that you can use. You click, you fill out your info, print it off, mail it to the bureaus and in seven to ten days you’ll have free credit reports that do not affect your credit score.
Tom: So you’re going to have a free credit report and there’s no charge to you to do this.
Andrea: No
Tom: Can’t beat that. Free, free, free.
Andrea: Absolutely.
Tom: Andrea, what are the most common mistakes that you think people either make about their credit reports or maybe the most common misbelief they have about them.
Andrea: Okay. What I did, I actually, and this is the article, I write a newsletter and I post it once a month, this was actually my thing and I recently gave a talk on it. And I I guess during this first section I’ll go over it in the second segment I’ll go over the number one mistake a consumer makes.
Tom: That’s good.
Andrea: It’s important that you know what your lenders are saying about you. There are so many methods you can get your credit report. You can go online and purchase it or your can order free credit reports you can go to tri-merge online to purchase it. But once you get your credit report people don’t realize, lets say you’re a consumer who you really hasn’t missed any payments you pay your debts on time and you think you have good credit but you just want to take it to the next level you want to have the best credit you can have. And it’s not really so drastic that you need to hire someone like me or even buy a credit repair book.
Tom: Okay
Andrea: A few minor things. Are you ready?
Tom: Go ahead.
Andrea: Okay if you look at your credit report this is pretty common that people do this, and you see something that says, accounts closed by credit grantor.
Tom: Yes.
Andrea: That happened because you got a Dillard’s card, Foley’s card, department store card you really don’t use they say the card is good until x amount of days and you really don’t renew the card and they don’t mail you an updated card because you don’t shop at their store you’ve had the credit card you didn’t close the account and what happens is if you don’t close these accounts before they’re set to close it will say account closed by credit grantor that is negative on your credit report.
Tom: Oh can you then get that…
Andrea: Absolutely.
Tom: …reversed?
Andrea: All you’ve got to do and I list on my little newsletter the methods of dispute. But you can contact the credit bureaus online or in writing and say I didn’t use the card, I wanted the card to be closed out can you just change it to say closed by consumer. They will always do this for you. You’ve got to ask though. You’ve got to contact all three credit bureaus and ask. And it may take abut thirty days but their going to update that for you to say that.
Tom: And that is going to give you a few more points.
Andrea: It will give you a few points.
Tom: Okay.
Andrea: And like I said if you need the points to get in the next category even five points can make all the difference. If an outsider looking in saw on your credit report closed by credit grantor you would think that that occurred because someone didn’t pay their bills and the credit card company must have shut them down.
Tom: That’s what I would think.
Andrea: It’s not the case. You just didn’t use the card even I’m guilty of that. I just didn’t use the card got the free gift they mailed me…
Tom: Sure.
Andrea: …or the discount coupons and then they closed it on me for lack of using it. Another big one is the account date or date of last activity or date of last update. When you look at your credit report, what makes a portion of your score is how much credit history you have and length of credit history or they say months reviewed. And let’s say you had a card three or four years you paid it off you closed the account you did every thing you were supposed to do and it’s sitting on your credit report. I suggest you contact the bureaus and create a reason why they need to look at that account. Say I want to make sure this account is listed as paid in full and closed by consumer cause that creates a new date of last activity on that good account.
Tom: Ah.
Andrea: And it also kind of re-calculates how many months reviewed that account happened. That can pick you up anywhere from four points to forty points depending on how long it’s been since the account been looked at.
Tom: So having a more recent activity on a good account...
Andrea: Absolutely.
Tom: …is okay.
Andrea: Even if the account is closed even though it’s closed you still want the recent activity.
Tom: As long as it’s a good account.
Andrea: As long as it’s a good account.
Tom: Okay. All right.
Andrea: We’re talking about a good account. You had a gas card you paid off you used in college you haven’t messed with it for years. But you don’t want to be cheated out of your months reviewed because that is part of your credit history and that kind of makes up what they’re saying about you and your score so why cheat yourself out of that.
Tom: Got it.
Andrea: Another one people don’t realize is excessive credit pulls. Now here’s the catch if you did not authorize these. If you look at your credit report it will tell you, you gonna have to look, and it’ll say if it was your own credit card company looking at it or if it was promotional people offering it or if it was a bank just pulling your credit. You have situations where identity theft happens or its collection account that doesn’t belong to you and it’s agreed upon. Well that debt collector is gonna look at your credit report and that does count as a credit inquiry and it costs you three to seven points
Tom: Okay.
Andrea: It’s for collection purposes.
Tom: Can that be reversed?
Andrea: You would need to write a letter to whatever debt collector or bank looked at your credit that you did not authorize and say I did not authorize you to pull my credit.
Tom: So not to the credit bureau but to the actual creditor.
Andrea: To the actual creditor and write them a letter.
Tom: Andrea you’re going to be coming back in the next segment. So everybody stay tuned. If you have a question you can give us a call at 888-327-0061 or email us at radio@iHateDebt.com. There’s plenty more to talk about. Andrea Villarreal from Better Scores Better Rates coming back on I Hate Debt on wsRadio.com the worldwide leader in Internet talk.
The Credit Report
Credit Score
Credit Repair
Your Free Credit Report
The History of the Credit Report
Credit Report Tips
Credit Repair Scams
Credit and Your Career
Consumer Alerts for D.C. Credit Services and Camco
Some collection agencies has started reporting old debt as new. Find out more here and here's a letter that you can use to file a complaint if this has happened to you.
Read the transcript of Andrea Villarreal from Better Scores Better Rates’ "I Hate Debt" radio show interview.
Improving Your Credit Score 1
Improving Your Credit Score 2
Listen to Andrea R. Villarreal from Better Scores Better Rates’ “I Hate Debt” radio show interview.
Segment 1
Segment 2
