Category Archives: Home Mortgage
Rebuilding Your Life After Bankruptcy; Don't Cave To Holiday Pressures! (Page 1 of 3)
There’s something about shopping during the holidays as I watch consumers being attacked by exuberant cashiers pushing their store’s credit card that gets me concerned for those trying to build a solid life after bankruptcy.
These clerks seem to be unaware of how careful individuals have been all year to build their life after bankruptcy; by watching what they spend, and how easy it is to go over budget. Offering a ¡°credit rebuilder¡± a new card is like offering a recovering chocoholic a gooey double-fudge brownie supreme.
The holidays bring about mixed feelings among my clients: joy, anxiety, fear, sadness¡.not any of it relating to the reason for the season.
Rebuilding your credit and creating the life after bankruptcy that you desire is a difficult tightrope balance between moving forward with your life and not ruining the upward progress of your credit score.
Holidays mean gift-giving gatherings with sometimes hundreds of people, if you total them all up. Pressure rises when the office party committee asks us to pitch in for gifts for management.
Your head starts spinning when you think about how your extended family has grown and how they will all exchange presents Christmas Eve at your house this year. You finally feel the wind knocked out of your sails when the cashier tells you that you can save up to 25% on your purchase if you apply for their wonderful store credit card.
Just remember and keep this thought at the front of your mind…creating the desirable life after bankruptcy is the objective, not the savings of 25% that is surely to be out of our original budget anyway.
As someone who has recently discharged a bankruptcy and is trying to rebuild life after bankruptcy as well as create a high credit rating, should you respond to such a sweet, seductive offer? (Twenty-five percent off purchases, after all, would give you the extra money to buy Aunt Millie that deluxe food steamer!)
But here’s what I teach as a financial counselor from Credit Is Key: though it is much easier said than done, do NOT apply for any credit cards during the holiday crunch.
Every financial move should be the result of planning and preparation for your life after bankruptcy – not suddenly caving in to pacify the salesclerk – or Aunt Millie. If you say ¡°yes,¡± then the store will make an inquiry on your credit.
Did you know that even a couple inquiries will actually hurt your credit?
Rebuilding your life after bankruptcy requires inner strength. A strength you have been nurturing and growing since your discharge. A strength that is given a boost by having a specific goal in mind and a planned strategy in place; building a wonderful credit rating to enjoy your life after bankruptcy. Help yourself! Instead of falling into the ¡°get-a-credit- card-and-reduce-your-spending¡± trap, try these ideas for holiday savings — without inquiries or damaging rejections. Always remember the objective…improve your life after bankruptcy by improving your credit rating!
Credit Bureau Basics
Credibility counts. And no one knows it better then the credit bureaus. These are the places where you can get a rating to certify your creditworthiness. And of course they charge you for it. The approach is simple enough. They keep an eye on the credit transaction that a person enters into and then its repayment. The banks and credit card companies use this information before striking a business with an individual. Credit bureaus are not watchdogs. They are just observers who want to know if a borrower is respecting the borrowed monies. They have to keep a track of how borrowed money is used. Trans Union, Equifax etc. are some of USAs credit bureaus. They are governed under an act and also under a mandate to revive a persons reputation if he can get a hiatus of at least seven years after one bad credit. But if one goes bankrupt then the time for him to prove his creditworthiness is an extra three years.
The average American lives under some kind of debt all the time. The number of bills that flows in through the letter-slit of every home at the beginning of every month shows this. The piling up of bills can leave any one dumbfound. A proper management of the bills has to be understood in order to clear them. The to-do-list approach is one such way to get tem off your shoulder. Pen them down in order of last day of payment. The bills for services that sustain a person have to be paid in priority. The gas, telephone bills are some such debts. Tax too finds itself on a higher podium then the others. No bill is les important however; some are more important then other. So the ones that are not, can be kept at a secondary priority. It varies from a person to person in deciding, which is which.
A monthly budget has always been a good tactic to handle overspending. At the beginning of the month expenditure list must be made. This works as a guideline throughout the month and also a corrective parameter. A budget is not a very complex document. The sources of income and expenditure have to be listed and then it has to be calculated which exceeds which and by how much?
Its always better to be in the good books of the credit bureaus. And for doing so it becomes important what the secret eyes are watching. A model proposed by Fair Isaac & Company is used to figure out the credit rating. It includes data about outstanding debts of a person, since when is the person running on credit, what types of credit dies he takes and what kinds of accounts thus he operate with. Apart from these there are many more but the rating program keeps these into top priority.
Many people do not have a clear picture of what a credit bureau does. A CB is never biased against the minorities, which is a big misconception that it is. These are absolutely secret services and they never disclose the information about a person about any other one. So now if you want to get your money credibility right, get in to the good lists of the credit raters.