How Closing Credit Accounts Can Undermine Credit Scores

In the last few months I’ve helped several families refinance and consolidate their credit card debt using the equity in their houses. One family was able to save $1,100 per month, another family $1,300 per month, and another family $1,700 per month. That represents a significant amount of any family’s monthly cash Read More >

5 Strategies to Lower Your Credit Card Utilization Rate and Improve Your Credit Score

Technology has inspired a great many beneficial inventions and creations. Whether credit scoring is one of them is a debate for another day, but credit scoring is here and it isn’t going away any time soon. That being said, one of the little known 5 key criteria that leads many people to have lower credit scores than Read More >

How Credit Card Utilization Rate Drives Your Credit Score

There was a time when paying your monthly debt payments by their respective due dates (on time) was enough to constitute good credit because your payment history was a great indicator of your willingness to repay your debts and to pay them on time. Your payment history used to account for nearly 100% of your overall Read More >

What is the Biggest Threat to Financial Health?

While not having an emergency reserve represents a big threat to anybody’s financial health, without a doubt, the biggest threat to the financial health of many Americans is consumer debt! Consumer debt is comprised of credit card debt, auto loans, and other installment loans, but credit card debt accounts for the Read More >

Credit Is Debt In The Absence Of Collateral!

It’s virtually impossible to avoid debt in today’s society and Americans have shown that they have no problem taking on debt if it will enable them to have the things they want now instead of at some future date. According to www.nerdwallet.com, as of August 2014, Americans have approximately $880 billion in Read More >

What Are Lenders Looking For? Credit!

When a lender is confronted with a borrower seeking financing they are looking for the 4 Cs of borrowing. In a post entitled “What is the Greatest Obstacle to Borrowing Money to Purchase a House?” I explained what the 4 Cs of borrowing are. In this post I intend to get much more specific as to what a lender is looking Read More >