Cash Advance Mojo would like to take a moment to discuss something that pertains to anyone who cares about maintaining their credit. According to Silicon Valley Blogger of The Digerati Life, myFICO is going to stop using consumers’ Experian credit scores and reports when factoring their score. This is planned to go into effect on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2009. If you need an Experian score and report, get it before then or you will lose out. Get to their Web site now!

Equifax and Transunion scores will remain available through these and other sources.

This will not directly impact your ability to apply for a cash advance, as credit scores are not typically required.

As you may know, Experian is one of the three national credit bureaus (Experian, Equifax and Transunion). They won’t be going away completely, however. They will sell FICO scores to their own customers (lenders, banks and other institutions). What will this mean? Other parties will be able to see data that we can’t see. It will be that much harder to view your credit standing. I’d like to know how they plan to end-around the Fair Credit Reporting Act, because a consumer reporting agency like Experian is required by law to “provide a consumer with information about him or her in the agency’s files and to take steps to verify the accuracy of information disputed by a consumer.”

Making credit repair even harder – during a recession!

Needless to say, Experian is under fire. According to Silicon Valley Blogger, they have ended their partnership with Fair Isaac (who is responsible for  the FICO score and myFICO.com) for “competitive reasons.” Consumers are being taken advantage of here!

Silicon Valley Blogger goes on to show how various myFICO products you may have used or are planning to use will be affected by the absence of Experian. Again, keep in mind that being able to apply for a payday loan won’t typically be impacted by this change):

• FICO Credit Complete: no Experian, discounts offered to remainder of service
• FICO Standard: no Experian, discounts offered to remainder of service
• Suze Orman’s FICO Kit Platinum: no Experian, discounts offered to remainder of service

Pretty definitive, isn’t it?

myFICO ideas for managing your credit profile, post-Experian

Silicon Valley Blogger relays some ideas from the myFICO forums about how to go forward and manage your credit profile:

• Buy a new myFICO CreditComplete package on the 12th or 13th
• Boycott lenders who use Experian scores for credit ratings. (Cash Advance Mojo loves this one!)
• Get the scores directly from Experian before the expiration date
• Some financial institutions may still allow you to obtain your Experian score and report
• Experian report information (not score) will still be available at annualcreditreport.com

Remember: cash advance typically requires no credit check

Cash Advance Mojo is as distressed about the situation with Experian as you are. I’d be curious to see how this works out in court, because there are bound to be lawsuits.  Sure, a payday loan or cash advance may not require a credit check, but plenty of other services and purchases do. The information should be transparent and consumers should be able to see. It’s the law, or at least it should be.

Related articles

• Experian Says You’re Not Entitled To Know Your Credit Score Anymore (dvorak.org)
• MyFICO ScoreWatch Review: Perfect for Credit Score Junkies! at http://www.bargaineering.com/articles/myfico-review-scorewatch.html (bargaineering.com)

We are getting closer to concluding this series on credit provided by personalmoneystore.com’s payday loans money blog.

We hope that the information provided thus far has been helpful to you in obtaining, reviewing and understanding your credit report as well as how credit works in general.

Now that you have reviewed your credit report, you may have found some errors. These errors, insignificant as they my seem, can prove devastating to your financial options over time.

Imagine what you would save on your home mortgage payment if your interest rate was a 1 to 2 percent lower. Your credit score can make a big difference on rates such as these, so working toward improving your credit score by fixing any errors can save you lots of extra money over time.

Finding Errors On Your Report

We all make mistakes, including our creditors. When creditors report your personal information to the credit bureaus, and when the credit bureaus update your personal credit report, mistakes are sometimes made that can cause you as the consumer to suffer undeserved consequences. Therefore, you must take ample time to look over your report to assure its accuracy.

Choose Your Errors Wisely

When reporting errors, you will want to pick and choose your disputes wisely. If you see a discrepancy such as the wrong creditor’s name or a recorded date on an older account that is inaccurate, it is best to leave these undisputed, as these issues do not have any real effect on your credit rating.

Additionally, remember when you dispute an error on your credit report, make sure you have the necessary documentation to back it up. Failing to have adequate support for your claims will get your dispute discarded as well as any other dispute that you file in the next 12-month period. So report only those errors that have a negative bearing on your credit rating.

The Law is on Your Side

When it comes to your credit, the law is on your side. If you have a dispute and the documentation to prove it, the credit bureaus must do their part to resolve it, or they will be held in violation of the laws protecting consumers. Be sure to make copies of everything you send to the credit bureaus so you have the necessary means to force the issue if your dispute fails to get addressed appropriately.

The Most Common Mistakes You’ll Find

1. Creditor Information that is InaccurateUsually errors such as these don’t matter a whole lot, but if you are insistent upon eliminating the error, request that the item be deleted. The bureaus will then delete the information or contact the creditor to verify the mistake in question. Therefore, if at all possible, try to clear the error with you creditor first before making the request to the credit bureaus to edit your personal report.Don’t expect to find all your accounts on your report. Some accounts, such as those established with payday loans lenders, don’t typically report information to the credit bureaus.
2. Inaccurate Credit LimitsIf you see that any of your credit limits are higher than they actually are, you will want to report them as inaccurate because it shows you have more financial liability than you actually do.
3. Inaccurate Account TypesIf you have closed an account that is reported open on your credit report, this too can hurt your credit rating. Some inaccuracies, however, may actually help you in your pursuit of good credit, such as a loan that you may already paid off that has duplicate entries on your report. This will only show that you have been consistently responsible. Leave it alone!
4. Inaccurate BalancesContrary to the above, if you have a account that you owe money on that is reported twice or more on your report, this will hurt you in that it shows you have more outstanding debts than you really do.This is a common scenario that often happens with consumers who have been turned over to collections. A credit report will show two accounts owed, the account with the creditor that turned them over to collections and the new collection account. Both will show the same debt.If this happens to you, you can have the original account deleted as the original creditor has sold your account to the collection agency.
5. Inaccurate Reports of Delinquency or Late PaymentsThese errors can hurt you the worst. If you see a late payment or delinquent account on your credit report and can prove otherwise through either a printed online statement or receipt, you should not have any problem overturning the error on your report.

Reporting information

The names and contact information of the three bureaus are as follows:

Equifax: P.O. Box 740250, Atlanta, GA 30374- 0241.
Report fraud: Call (888) 766-0008 and write to address above.
TDD: (800) 255-0056
Web: www.equifax.com

Experian: PO Box 9532, Allen, TX, 75013
Report fraud: Call (888) EXPERIAN (888-397-3742) and write to address above.
TDD: Use relay to fraud number above.
Web: www.experian.com/fraud

TransUnion: P.O. Box 6790, Fullerton, CA 92834-6790.
Report fraud: Call (800) 680-7289 and write to address above.
TDD: (877) 553-7803
E-mail (fraud victims only): fvad@transunion.com
Web: www.transunion.com

Good Luck with your credit-building endeavors, and stay tuned to the payday loans money blog for more credit building tips.

Image by flickr

The payday loan money blog continues Part III on personal credit with obtaining and reviewing your personal credit report. Here’s how.

A quick Internet search will reveal several sites you can use to order your credit report, but if you want the one that I use, it’s www.freeannualcreditreport.com. This site is a reputable source and will allow you to print off all three of your credit reports from each of the three main credit bureaus.

You will be asked some personal questions in regard to previous street addresses or credit accounts that will help them identify you as the person you say you are. Once you get through these preliminaries, you will be able to print off your report for review.

Understanding Your Credit Report

After printing off your credit report, the next objective is to carefully review it for any discrepancies. By discrepancies I mean anything that appears to be incorrect.

You may have misspelling in your name and address or you may have credit accounts listed that don’t belong to you. This could be a result of identity fraud or perhaps just a recording mistake made by someone else’s creditor or the credit bureau themselves.

Reading your credit report can be confusing at first, but after a short examination you ought to be able to make sense of it. Your credit report will be divided in to several sections. Here is some helpful information describing each section you will find on your report.

Section 1: Personal Information

The section on personal information is the easiest part of your credit report to read and contains information such as SSN, Name, Address, etc. Double check the information here for accuracy before moving on.

Section 2: Credit History

The credit history section contains the bulk of the information on your credit report. It lists all the information for your past credit accounts including the date they were opened, closed, account numbers, names of your creditors and if you still owe a creditor, the minimum payments, the total balance left on the account and the current status of the account whether delinquent or in good standing.

If you possess accounts that are not showing on your credit report, it may be because they are relatively new or the account resides with a company that doesn’t run credit checks when applying for their service. This would include companies like payday loans lenders. Some payday loans lenders don’t require credit checks at all, making them a prime source of extra cash for individuals with a bad credit score.

This information is pretty straightforward, but there may be some things you question, so I will list them below for your understanding.

• Internal Collection: The creditor is in the process of trying to collect the debt.
• Charged Off: The creditor tried to collect the debt, couldn’t and threw
  in the towel.
• Numbers prefaced by R or I: You will see a lot of the numbers on your accounts prefaced with the letters R or I. “R” stands for revolving credit accounts where “I” stands for Installment loan accounts. The lower the number that follows, usually between one and nine, the better the payment history on that account.

Section 3. Public Records

If you have anything in the public records section, you have a long road of credit repair ahead of you. This is the section where things like defaults and or bankruptcies are reported and is a big red flag to anyone thinking about extending a line of credit to you.

You will have to be diligent and patient as these things can take a long time to cycle of your credit report. For example, a bankruptcy can take as long as 10 years to cycle off.

Keep in mind, however, that these public records are easier to deal with as they get older, provided you maintain a clean credit history between then and now. Your credit score, however, won’t come to its full potential no matter what you do until they clear off your report altogether.

Section 4. Inquiries

An inquiry is marked on your credit report whenever the creditor you’re applying for financing through checks your personal credit. These inquiries could also be insurance providers as well as employers you applied with and gave consent to run your credit.

The more credit inquiries on your account, the more risky you appear to creditors as they might tend to think you will overextend yourself with two many open accounts and therefore not be able to pay them on time.

The number of inquiries typically doesn’t affect your credit score too much, but as a general rule of thumb you will want to be conscious of how often you are opening or applying for accounts or services that require a credit check.

In Conclusion

Take the time to download and review your credit report and join us again for Part IV of this series on the payday loans money blog.

I hope your report fares well!

Building credit is more complicated than most people think. It's not simply a matter of paying your bills on time.

On PersonalMoneyStore.com’s payday loans money blog, we talk about a variety of financial topics and money-saving tips, tricks and strategies that help you stretch each of your hard-earned dollars the furthest.

We care about your financial welfare and want to equip you effectively to prosper financially.

That being said, today we are going to start a series on credit — undeniably the most important and least understood part of consumer financial education.

What is Credit?

Most consumers don’t realize the importance of credit or even what credit is. When most of us hear the term credit we think of all the plastic in our wallet that allows us to charge purchases for later payment.

Often times the term credit brings a mixture of both good and bad feelings because of the opportunity it provides us as well as the difficulties it can bring in light of the debt we as consumers tend to accumulate.

The Objective of this Series on Credit

For the duration of this series, however, we will be talking about credit in the terms of personal credit or credit score, or in other words the scoring index by which creditors judge our “credit worthiness” or ability to handle money effectively and responsibly.

How Credit Works

How credit works is complicated, but to get the ball rolling a little more quickly, let’s just throw out a quick description in layman terms.

Every time a consumer, such as yourself, applies for an account with a creditor — such as a bank, credit card company, retail store, auto loan, personal loan or even a home mortgage — the account is reported to each of the nations three main credit bureaus.

There are many factors which determine a good credit score.

What Creditors Track

The credit bureaus track the number of open accounts, closed accounts, account balances, credit inquiries and any history of late payments or collections that have been reported on your behalf. Through a complex algorithm unique to each of the bureaus, they assign you a numerical score.

The purpose of this credit scoring system is twofold. First, it helps protect creditors from fraudulent or irresponsible customer transactions on financed merchandise such as cars, furniture, appliances and anything else you would choose to finance with a credit card or a company’s in-house financing options.

Their are some exceptions to this rule, such as payday loans lenders. These companies typically don’t work with the credit bureaus, which makes them a good loan option for people with bad credit, but we will talk about that later in this series.

Secondly, and most importantly, credit scoring it set up to award those who are diligent and responsible with their financial resources and penalize those who are not.

The difficulty in obtaining a good credit score these days has become a little more cloudy and involves more than just paying your bills on time. For many this begs the question: Is the effort worth it? Or is having good credit really that important?

How Important Is It To Have Good Credit?

It can be easy to brush off the pursuit of good credit as unimportant, but today good credit has become a very important, integral part of every consumer’s personal and financial success. Your personal credit score has an effect on the following:

• How much you pay for car insurance
• How much you pay for house insurance
• How you pay for your personal health insurance
• How high your interest rate is on your home mortgage loan
• How high your interest rate is on auto or other personal loans
• The total credit amount you’re awarded with financed options or credit loans
• Your chances of employment

Almost every major financial transaction will consider your personal credit rating or credit score before awarding or denying you any contractual terms.

Credit and Employment

As mentioned above, more and more employers are running credit checks to validate the credit worthiness of new hires, as they believe it is the best indicator of a potential employee’s responsibility. Employers associate a good credit score with an employee’s diligence to come to work on time each day and fulfill the requirements of their job position.

The Value of Having Good Credit

You can’t put a price on good credit. Good credit saves you a fortune in unnecessary expenses over time that can be delegated to a retirement savings plan or college fund for the kids. Knowing how credit works and its effect on your financial endeavors will open doors that would otherwise stay shut. Short term credit needs are filled well by payday loans.

That concludes part one of this series on how credit works. Consider your personal credit and its limiting factors in your life and join us again tomorrow for part two.

See you then!

Posted courtesy of personalmoneystore.com, your payday loans source.

Today we will talk about the main characteristics the credit bureau’s themselves are looking at on your credit report before passing judgment on your credit worthiness. Knowing these criteria are essential to finding favor in the eyes of the those by who’s judgment in many respects, opens or closes doors of financial opportunity in your life.

When credit bureaus are determining your credit score, they tend to do so by looking at the following characteristics evidenced on your credit report.

1. Late Payments

Are you headed down the right road when it comes to your credit?

This is an obvious one but it cannot be stressed enough. If you have delinquent payments on your report, lenders of whom you wish to do business with will harbor some fear of you repeating this bad behavior. Remember, late payments will plague your report for three years before eventually getting cycled off.

Avoid late payments to your creditors any way that you can. As a last resort, you can always get a payday loan to avoid a late fee or delinquent payment from being reported to the credit bureaus. This is a far less costly solution to you in the long run as the interest rates that you will have to pay over the next three years with any new lenders will be higher due to the reported delinquency. DO NOT MAKE LATE PAYMENTS!

2. Spending Habits

How you tend to use your credit is also a criteria examined by the credit bureaus. When looking at your credit accounts and account balances they are able to determine just how conservative you are as a consumer spender. If your credit lines are maxed out or close to you available credit limit, you would be considered much more of a risk.

In contrast, avoiding a revolving credit balance by paying your consumer credit cards off at the end of each month or billing period will show you to be a far more conservative spender and therefore less of a risk to lenders.

Just because you make your payments on time does not mean you will have good credit. Your spending habits can byte you in more ways then one

3. Age of credit

There is know way to say exactly what model the credit bureau’s use to score your credit as this information is proprietary and confidential. However, the length of time over which you have established positive credit history is likely a key factor in your score as well. Establishing good credit is a lifestyle of financial responsibility as your score is factored over many criteria including your time of good standing.

4. Number And Frequency Of Creditor Inquiries

Every time you apply for a consumer credit card, car loan, home mortgage etc., you incur a credit inquiry on your report. A credit inquiry is a creditor obtaining your credit information via your consent and social security number. The more inquiries that you have over a give period of time can greatly effect your credit scored as new lenders see a barrage of financial responsibilities that you may be responsible. This makes you seem a little more risky as lenders may believe your overextending yourself.

5. Credit Variety.

There is different types of credit that you can be approved for. Credit bureaus look for a variety of installment loans and revolving loans. These would be as mixture of auto, credit cards, retail and etc. Installment loans are loans that a person borrows once and makes payments until the balance is payed in full. Revolving credit are credit loans that has a revolving balance where regular payments are made which each frees up more access to money.

Maintaining your credit is an area of your life that you cannot afford to disregard. On your mortgage alone you can save ten of thousands of dollars on a thirty year fixed mortgage by having a fair credit scored over a poor one or an exceptional credit score over a fair one.

Bad credit is a bleeding would in your financial affairs and because it takes time to heal your credit, now is the best time to apply the dressing.

Unfortunately with all your well doing, the credit bureau’s themselves can sometimes make a mistake on your credit report. Stay tuned to blog to find out how you can clean up discrepancies which have been made on your credit report as well as how you can combat your creditors judgments against you.