Prepaid Debit Card Reviews, Complaints, Etc

Tag: credit report

  • Tips on How to Avoid Paid Credit Repair Scams

    Tips on How to Avoid Paid Credit Repair Scams

    If you’re like millions of other Americans, you likely began 2015 with a handful of resolutions to improve your physical or financial health. Unfortunately, there are all too many predatory companies and scam artists who want to turn your commitment to better yourself into a quick profit for themselves. And just as you should steer clear of anyone shilling for a diet that has you eating only foods of a particular color, so too should you know how to avoid credit repair scams.

    That is one of the New Year messages from Better Business Bureau (BBB) chapters from Illinois to Louisiana. As the BBB notes, the credit repair scams promise a quick-fix for the sort of credit woes that prevent people from either obtaining a mortgage or a car loan or instead compel them to pay a high interest rate for those loans. In exchange, these local and national companies vowing to provide a clean bill of credit health charge upfront fees as high as $250 – and sometimes follow those up with additional monthly charges as well.

    How to avoid credit repair scams

    As the BBB makes clear, these credit repair scams do nothing more than make already financially vulnerable people’s situations even worse. “No one can make bad credit scores simply disappear,” says a BBB statement. “After consumers pay these companies hundreds or even thousands of dollars in upfront fees, frequently these companies do nothing to improve your credit report and many simply vanish with your money.”

    In fact, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) lists the many signs of a credit repair scam that consumers should watch out for. At the top of the list is a request by so-called credit repair companies that you pay them before they will do any work on your behalf. This is illegal. Other signs of a credit repair scam include being told not to directly contact the credit reporting companies – including Experian, TransUnion and Equifax – that maintain credit reports and calculate credit scores. The FTC also advises avoiding any company that urges you to dispute information included in your credit report that you know is correct or tells you to provide false information on a credit application.

    BBB Advises how to avoid credit repair scams.

    Things to Watch out for: Free Things You Can Do to Improve Your Credit:
    •  Company asks you to pay up front before any work is done
    • Being told not to directly contact the credit reporting companies: Experian, TransUnion and Equifax
    • Urges you to dispute information in your credit report
    • Tells you to provide false information on a credit application
    • Create a personal debt repayment plan and stick to it
    • Take advantage of the legal right to access and check your credit report for free once per year – go to www.annualcreditreport.com or call 1-877-322-8228 – you can get a copy of your report from each of the three reporting companies
    • Dispute any errors you find on your credit report

    Truth is, improving credit doesn’t happen in a hurry. Instead, the BBB suggests devising a personal debt repayment plan and sticking to it and taking advantage of the legal right to access and check your credit report for free once every year. If you come across errors that are harming your credit, take the time to dispute them. “If your credit is less than golden, there are steps you can take to repair it on your own, at no cost,” says the FTC. “Only time and a personal debt repayment plan will improve your credit.”

  • JP Morgan Chase Aims to Boost Consumer Financial Security

    JP Morgan Chase Aims to Boost Consumer Financial Security

    Over the summer CardRatings.com issued a disturbing report that revealed the sorry state of financial literacy among the general population. Despite all of the news about data breaches at Target and Home Depot, fewer than half of those surveyed knew the proper steps to take to monitor and protect their credit – basic steps to maintaining financial security. This lack of understanding, unfortunately, extends beyond just credit issues to the basics of savings and investing and other straightforward elements of financial fitness. Add in the stressed finances of many American families and the predatory practices of payday loan and check cashing outfits and it all adds up to a major problem.

    Yet it is one the financial services industry seems increasingly focused on addressing. As part of that effort, JPMorgan Chase & Company announced on Sept. 19 a two-year, $35 million effort to assist individuals and families to save money, build credit and generally improve their financial security. The money will be disbursed in the forms of grants to non-profit organizations that help consumers boost their financial knowledge and that also develop financial products and tools that meet the needs of typically under-served communities.

    Indeed, according to JPMorgan Chase, its grants will be targeted to three distinct areas. For one thing, it will be seeking out non-profits that can provide innovative, technology-heavy financial solutions to help meet consumer needs in an affordable way. Understanding that innovative solutions that nobody knows about aren’t useful, grants will also be given to support efforts to expand the availability of these novel solutions. And grantees that seek to disseminate financial best practices will also be considered.

    For instance, JPMorgan Chase contributed $150,000 to MoneyThink to help that group develop and app and curriculum to boost the financial literacy of 11th and 12th graders. “Chase’s support will help serve an additional 2,000 youth through near-peer mentorship and game-based mobile technologies,” said Ted Gonder, the CEO of MoneyThink.

    This latest announcement is a follow-up to JP Morgan Chase’s establishment earlier this year of the Financial Solutions Lab. A five-year, $30 million program in collaboration with the Center for Financial Services Innovation, the lab is centered on developing and distributing innovative products that improve financial security.

  • How To Fix Your Credit Report

    How To Fix Your Credit Report

    There are plenty of compelling reasons people should want to have a good credit report. A solid credit report leads to the sort of credit score that makes mortgage and auto lenders eager to give you the best interest rates available. Simply put, it means you can save a lot of money in interest payments over the years, especially with the sort of big-ticket items you typically need a loan to buy.

     

     

    While most of the work involved with having a good credit report and score is in our hands, your good credit can sometimes require the credit bureaus not making errors. Sadly, they are far from infallible. A Federal Trade Commission (FTC) study conducted last year found that five percent of consumers had errors on their annual credit reports that could cause them to have to pay more interest on their loans. Furthermore, the FTC study also discovered that 25 percent of people found errors on their credit reports.

    Which is why it’s so important to catch and correct any errors that show up on your credit report as soon as you possibly can. A recent story in US News & World Report provides tips on how to do that.  Here are some of the suggestions, provided by reporter, Jenna Lee:

    • Review those reports. You can’t fix what you don’t know about. So the very first step to ensuring that a faulty credit report won’t cost you serious money is identifying any errors. That is easy to do now that the law entitles Americans to a free credit report each year. All you have to do is go to AnnualCreditReport.com and request a report from each of the three major bureaus, TransUnion, Equifax and Experian.
    • Take a very close look. Once you receive your credit reports, take out that magnifying glass and look for errors. In particular, pay close attention to account details that are wrong and, even worse, fraudulent accounts (i.e. ones you didn’t open).
    • Get proof you’re right and they’re wrong. The credit bureaus aren’t just going to take your word for it that they’ve goofed. You’ll have to assemble documentation that highlights their errors.
    • Write a letter. Once you have all of the information you need to dispute any errors, you’ll have to alert the credit bureaus of the mistakes. Do that by writing a letter to each bureau. The FTC provides a sample letter that makes it easy.
    • Be prepared to wait. Sending in a dispute letter obligates the credit bureaus to act, which generally takes place within 30 days. If you don’t hear anything back in that timeframe, be prepared to follow up.
    • Remain vigilant. The good news, as Lee writes in her story, is that the FTC report found that four out of five consumers who disputed an error had at least some success in correcting the problem. But Lee offers up some important advice for even those folks who are successful. “New errors could be introduced in the future,” she writes. “Continually monitor your credit to ensure your information remains as accurate as possible.”

     

     

  • Turning Student Debt Into Good Credit

    Turning Student Debt Into Good Credit

    There’s just no escaping the fact that a mountain of student debt is a big burden. And these days, kids fresh out of college are looking at a Himalayas-like amount of debt to pay off before they’ve even started their careers. According to a recent story in US News & World Report, college kids owe an average of $33,000 from the moment they grab their diplomas and stride into adulthood.

    But in that same story reporter Divya Raghavan offers up a way grads can make lemonade out of that forest of lemons. How? By responsibly paying off all of that student debt and showing lenders that you know how to handle your finances responsibly. Doing so is a way to build the kind of credit score and credit history every adult needs. “They can result in a graduate being able to qualify for his or her first apartment, first car loan and, very often, first unsecured credit card,” writes Raghavan.

    As Raghavan points out, there’s nothing particularly magical about how this all works. In simple terms, a large amount of student debt can only be paid off with diligent and persistent hard work. Which means that if a fresh graduate makes on-time payments month after month creditors are going to get the message that this young adult is someone who can be trusted with a car loan, mortgage or credit card. Lenders will know that a former student is low risk because student loan payments are reported to the three major credit bureaus, TransUnion, Experian and Equifax. The credit score and report that these agencies come up with is based on how timely and complete those repayments are.

    And their impact goes beyond just how likely you are to get a car loan. There are times when prospective employers will ask applicants for their credit report. Although employers can only review a potential hire’s credit report with the consent of a job applicant, it’s important to be aware of the possibility of a request. In fact, a study by the Society for Human Resource Management found that almost half of employers conducted a credit check on potential employers.

    There are times when even the most well-meaning and responsible graduate just can’t make those loan repayments. When that is the case, Raghavan writes that the best approach is to defer the loans. Defaulting on the debt will do lasting harm to your credit score. “As a good rule of thumb, remember that it’s OK to defer, but not to default,” she writes.

     

     

     

     

     

Prepaid Debit Card Reviews, Complaints, Etc