credit score

How To Improve Your Credit Score

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There is a lot of phony information out there about improving your credit score. There is also a lot of information that once worked, but doesn’t anymore, things like disputing everything on your credit report. So, what is the real way on how to improve your credit score? What Is In Your Credit Score? Let’s start from the beginning. What is in your credit score? Your credit score comes from the information in your credit report. If you are wondering how information gets on your credit report, your creditors are snitches. Each money, they report data to the credit bureaus about what accounts you have with them, how long you have had the account, how much money you owe, how much credit you have available, and if your payment was on-time, late, or never paid. How are they allowed to do that? Easy. When you signed up, it was buried in that agreement you never read. Besides, if it’s true, then there is nothing you can do about it. People are allowed to say true things about you. Your credit score is made up of four main things (check here for how your credit score is calculated) Your Payment History …

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Chase Sapphire Preferred Card Benefits

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I don’t need more credit cards. My Capital One card has something like a $35,000 credit limit. I pay it off every month. So, why am I getting a Chase Sapphire Preferred rewards credit card? However, while the easiest thing to do is to just get a good credit card that earns cash back, I like earning points that I use on travel. Up until now, I haven’t really hacked travel rewards points like this guy does, but after reading through some of his stuff, I feel like I should. Money is fungible (that means money is the same no matter how you use it), but people aren’t robots. I don’t care that the spreadsheet that is my net worth says that earning $2,000 cash back is the same as getting a $2,000 hotel stay for free. The thing is, I have money, what I want is that hotel stay, and I don’t want to feel like I’m paying for it. And, voila, travel rewards are better than cash back, for me. Credit Card Miles Hacking Why should I get a Chase Sapphire Preferred card? I’ll re-up my article about how getting cash back, or cash equivalents is often as …

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What Is Your REAL Credit Score?

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One of the latest trends in online personal finance is the idea of getting a free credit score. This plays so well because we all know how important our credit score is, but it is still relatively difficult for the average person to get and see their credit score. (Note this is different than getting your free credit REPORT, which you are entitled to each year by law.) FICO and Real Credit Scores The big problem with the concept of a real credit score is that there are lots of available credit scores, and none of them are fake scores, per se. After all, anyone can setup some math and calculate a number they call a credit score. The credit bureaus themselves created their own credit score called the Vantage Score. It’s a real score, created by real companies, and sold as a real product. It is also the actual credit score you get from Credit Karma if you use the Credit Karma free credit score service. However, very few lenders, relatively speaking, actually use the VantageScore when making their lending decisions. That doesn’t make it a fake score. It just makes it one that probably won’t get used. When most people say, “real …

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Is myFICO Worth It?

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Don’t waste your money on services that allow you to constantly get your credit score. Use a little insder knowledge to get a free credit score and check it only when it makes sense.

Quizzle Scam or Legit?

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I’ve gotten several requests for a Quizzle review. Quizzle is an online financial service that offers, according to the bold face type, a free credit report, free credit score and various financial tools. Whenever someone points me in the direction of a personal finance company like this the first thing I check is if I can sniff out a scam. Often, you can spot the scam coming before you even see the fine print. Obviously, if something isn’t on the up and up, then there is no reason to waste any time on a review. So, is Quizzle legitimate, or is this all a big con job? Quick Quizzle Review The biggest red flag for the various free credit score or free credit report offers floating around out there is to look for the words “free trial.” Typically, the way the free credit score scam works is that a financial company (including all three major credit bureaus) offer you a free report in big, bold type and in smaller type, lower down on the page, inform you that it isn’t actually free at all. Instead, you are being offered an automatically renewing trial membership in a credit monitoring program that …

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Is Credit Repair Legit, or Just a Credit Repair Scam?

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Is it just me, or are you getting a lot more offers for real credit repair these days? Legitimate Credit Repair Is there a way for someone to do legit credit repair? After all, there are all of these people out there selling credit repair services, so there has to be some real credit repair that isn’t just a scam, right? The reality is that credit scores, credit reports, and the credit bureaus that run the whole racket is big business. While you may know about credit scores and credit reports as what determines if you get credit or not, on the other side of the equation are big banks and investors who build billion dollar portfolios off of pools of borrowers. The key to both buying and selling these pools is the credit scores of the borrowers. Getting fake credit scores, or borrowers who fixed their credit with a scam, would be a big problem. Check out my Credit Karma review. The reality is that there really isn’t any legitimate way to fix your credit, other than to do better with your credit. Once upon a time, back before the housing bust and the Great Recession, you could fix …

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Credit Scores Make No Sense

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I spend a lot of time talking about whether or not the free credit scores from CreditKarma, or the WalletHub free credit scores, or the credit scores from Credit Sesame are “real credit scores” or not. The reality is that most of the time, it doesn’t actually matter. If it’s a Tuesday afternoon and you are sitting on your porch with a cold one, it is irrelevant whether your credit score is 714 or 723 or 815. The only time it matters, is when you are actually getting a loan. An interesting situation this weekend has shown me that even those real credit scores aren’t really real. Real Credit Scores When most people talk about a “real” credit score, they mean a FICO score. Most lenders rely upon FICO scores to make a decision about lending or what interest rate you get. The catch is that there are numerous kinds of FICO scores ranging from those used to judge creditworthiness for credit cards, a different one for car loans, and another still for mortgages. Beyond that, there are three major credit bureaus and all three of them can yield a different score depending upon what has been reported to each company. In …

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Experian Free Review – Scam, Legit, Worth It?

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Did you see commercials for a free credit service from Experian.  They do something clever in that they de-emphasize the free credit score idea and instead play up the concept that “credit is a skill” rather than a number. This is actually true advice, even if it isn’t what most people are looking for. This new push is undoubtedly a response to the growing number of free credit score services out there like Credit Karma, Credit Sesame, and WalletHub. Keep in mind there is no Experian free credit score offering, but we’ll get to that in a minute. This is also not the same thing as getting your annual free credit report that is required by federal law. Free Experian Credit Report Not Free Experian Credit Score Is Experian a scam? There are plenty of unsavory things about Experian’s business, but at least they are not some new free credit report, or free credit score business. Experian is one of the three major credit bureaus, and they have been around for a long time. If you have ever had a credit card, mortgage, car loan, or personal loan, chances are, they already have a report on you with all of your information. …

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Barclaycard Rewards MasterCard Review

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The folks at Barclay Card are nothing if not persistent. A buddy of mine is overseas. I picked up his mail, and there are at least a dozen Barclaycard MasterCard mailers in here. It got me wondering, is the Barclaycard Rewards MasterCard good or is the Barclaycard MasterCard a waste of money? Without further ado, here is the Barclaycard Rewards MasterCard review. Barclaycard Rewards MasterCard Reviews The Barclayscard MasterCard rewards card is issued by Barclays Bank Delaware. Barclays Bank Deleware was originally Juniper Bank, but was bought by big British bank Barclays in 2004. There is no actual bank, it only issues credit cards in the U.S. In addition to the Barclaycard Rewards MasterCard, the bank issues co-branded cards, such as an American Airlines credit card, the JetBlue credit card, and a Priceline.com rewards card. As always, different customers can get different terms and conditions for the same cards, but in this case, it looks the Barclaycard Rewards MasterCard is setup as a points rewards credit card. For every $1 you spend on gas, utility, and grocery stores, you earn 2 point. Note, that Target and Walmart are specifically excluded as grocery stores for the purposes of 2x points. Then, …

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Credit Score Differences

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It’s hard to get real, hard data on various finance things sometimes. After all, for “real world” data, I can only go on what I have most of the time. That’s hardly definitive for everyone. There is always data “out there,” of course, but it’s hard to know what to trust. Even when people are honest, they aren’t necessarily accurate. That’s why scientists hate research that depends upon participants self-reporting data. Even when you have real data, there is often fine print that renders it moot. For example, I have a credit score that gives me my credit score for free each month, but it says right there in small letters that this is not the score they use for making lending decisions. That hardly makes it my “real credit score” then. Credit Karma has free credit scores that are not FICO scores. Credit Sesame offers similar non-FICO based credit scores, also for free. Which Credit Score Is Real, Really? However, recently, I had a friend, who I trust and know well enough that he let me see some interesting data regarding his credit score. (Mostly, he wondered, what was going on.) It turns out that he has a credit …

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