Your Credit Score: Insurance and Your Credit Score

I just finished the 9th and 10th final chapters of Your Credit Score written by Liz Pulliam Weston. I enjoyed this book a lot and just finished it after reading it off and on for months. This chapter is interesting as it explains to you how your credit score can affect you in real life with your insurance. It can be shown to cost you more money over your lifetime. Some examples this chapter explains to you is the correlation of how credit score histories are used to price insurance premiums. It gives many stats and loss ratios based on derogatory and collections in the past for consumers. It tells what goes into an insurance score, to me it looked pretty similar to the FICO score model. She explains how you need insurance for big events, and gives an opinion on what claims to make. She discusses the stigma simply calling something water damaged can have on a property to current homeowners and future homeowners. In the 10th chapter she discusses how to keep your credit score healthy. Paying off your credit card balances is a really a big part often discussed. She talks about what you can afford, having adequate insurance, and an emergency fund of so much in savings in case of an occurance like a job loss, etc. She will cover student loan, and divorce situations as it can affect your credit. I enjoyed the book and other seminars, and books on this topic.

How to Raise Your Credit Score: Ideas on Credit Repair

Here are some ideas how to improve your credit score:

1. You should pull your credit report, go to Experian-Experian.com, Equifax-Equifax.com, TransUnion-TransUnion.com

You can contact these companies by phone by getting their most recent numbers on their website. I would recommend just calling them by phone, email support these days with any big company is tough.

Review for accuracy on your identifying info.  Carefully review your accounts and any late payments, collections, judgments other public records, are they accurate?  Check your Inquires, see who has had inquiries on your account, some are just soft inquiries and don’t hurt your credit score.  You are going to need to dispute errors, you can email or mail them on that. You may want to leave that up to a credit repair company.

2. Pay your bills on time, being late even just once can really really hurt your score based on how high of a score it is. You have to stay in the habit of it always being on time.  a day late or two isn’t a big deal, but 30+ days late is.  Online bill pay and automatic bill pay may help with this.

3. Pay down your debt, sometimes 50% balance isn’t enough, you may need that edge by getting it below 25% balance.  Moving balances around doesn’t always help. Paying down the debt, get those ratios in line.

4. Don’t close credit card and revolving accounts.  You need that credit history on these accounts and the available credit they provide.

5. Don’t apply everywhere for credit all the new credit and inquiries could hurt your score some.

There are books out there I’d recommend for credit repair, you can probably find more at www.RonOrr.com

Another site to check out is MyFico.com

Here is a book on credit repair

My Free Credit Score: Credit Scoring Myths

Go to www.FreeCreditReport.com

I am still reading the book  “Your Credit Score”  by Liz Pullman Weston.  I am up to page 70 now.  I do enjoy the book and I’ll update you along the way.   I just read a chapter about credit scoring myths, and I have read the same thing in other books, so you’ll see it in other places, but here are some credit myths.  Myth #1 Closing accounts will help your score, no it doesn’t it can hurt your score in most cases.  It takes away your available credit (spread) from balance to available.  Also it could take away one of your older accounts with history.  Myth #2 you can boost your score by having your limits lowered, no once again this lowers your debt to available credit ratio.   Myth #3 You’ll hurt your score by checking your own credit.  No not if you do it yourself from the credit bureau direct.  If you hire someone else to have the lender do it, then yes, that’s a “hard pull” and that will lower it some.   Skipping to Myth #7 Adding a 100 word statement on your account helps.  No, I have heard this many times, but I wouldn’t count on it helping.   Myth #10 bankruptcy hurts your score so much that you’ll never get credit.  This is not true, I know for a fact over recent years some lenders have allowed buyers to get loans with only 6months to 24 months out of bankruptcy.  Why is this?  Think about it, if you can only claim bankruptcy every 7 years, then after only 1 day the buyer has a clean slate, how safe is that for a lender, for awhile. You can always do a bad credit home loan purchase with something similar to a subprime lender.

To see the rest, please read the book, there are other books I can recommend out there.  If you have any questions about real estate at any time, or improving your credit score, etc.  please email me at ron@minnesotainvestors.com

Your Credit Score, how to fix, improve, and protect the 3-digit number that shapes your financial future. This book is written by Liz Pulliam Weston, and copywritten in 2005, so it’s still fairly recent.  I am currently on page 42 of this 159 page book. I read most of it last year and just picked it up and started reading it again this week.  This book has a lot of small topics covered, it’s an easy read and I like the way it’s layed out. I have spent a pretty decent amount of time
learning about credit repair and how the system works from some of the best in the business.  First off if you haven’t taken classes or read books about credit repair, it’s a must, it’s absolutely amazing how the system works and how much can be done about your credit score. I don’t have anything to sell you about credit repair, I just believe in it. In the future I will talk to you about how I am trying to put people together into credit repair programs so that you are able to get a house in the near future. Credit repair helps people and saves you a lot over the long run.  Back to this book let me tell you about some of the chapters covered: Why your credit score matters, how credit scoring works, improving your score the right way, credit scoring myths, coping with a credit crisis, rebuilding your score after disaster, identity theft, fast credit repair, insurance and your credit score, ongoing management of your score.  This is probably a book you’d want to pick up, I’d agree those are the main topics you’d want to learn about on credit repair. Look for future reviews on credit repair. At this time this probably is one area I feel the need to focus more of my time on as so many people will need it in the future.

If you have any questions about real estate at anytime please email me at ron@minnesotainvestors.com, if you could please do me a favor and email just 3 friends about this blog http://www.minnesotainvestors.com/blog/feed/ You could email them or have 3 other websites put up a link, linking to this site.