What Families in Financial Difficulty Should Know about Credit Reports and Credit Scores

POSTED BY: Mark F. Anderson | Consumer Credit 101, Credit Report, Credit Score

This is an excellent article by the National Consumer Law Center that explains essential information about credit reports and credit scores. What Is a Credit Report? Your credit report is a record of how you have borrowed and repaid debts. Almost every adult American has a credit file with each of the three major national credit bureaus: Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. Many but not all creditors report each month electronically to one or more of the credit bureaus the status of each of their accounts. Your credit report is a record of the history and description of the status of...

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Credit Reporting Firms’ Changes are Boosting Credit Scores

POSTED BY: Mark F. Anderson | Credit Report, Credit Score

Attorneys general in various states sued the Big 3 credit reporting agencies beginning in 2015 alleging their reports included misleading information. The lawsuits were settled and the agencies agreed that they would not report a collection account when it was the only one on a person's report. They also agreed to remove non-loan items that had been sent to collection firms such as gym memberships, library fines, and traffic tickets. They also agreed they would not report medical debt that had been paid by insurance. Beginning in 2017, the Big 3 began removing tax-lien and civil-judgment data. Earlier this...

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New Federal Law on Credit Freezes

POSTED BY: Mark F. Anderson | Credit Freezes

A new federal law, Senate Bill 2155, effective September 21, 2018, will enable anyone to place a "security freeze" on their credit files. The security freeze aka as a credit freeze blocks lenders from pulling your credit reports. It is a way to block identity thieves from using your financial information to open credit cards and to take out loans in your name. With a freeze, the credit bureaus cannot release any information without your permission. Until this new law was passed, the ways consumers could freeze their credit varied from state to state. Some states such as California had...

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How to Deal with Medical Debt

POSTED BY: Mark F. Anderson | Medical Debt

Anyone dealing with medical debt would profit from reading this article published today by The National Consumer Law Center. Don’t Pay Medical Debt Ahead of Other Debt or Borrow to Pay Medical Debt Most families encountering financial difficulty have overdue medical debt. You should treat medical debt as a low priority debt to be paid only after you pay more pressing types of debt, such as your mortgage, car loan, or criminal citations. Almost any other type of debt will be more pressing—medical debt should typically be your lowest priority. Similarly, never pay medical debt by incurring other debt. The...

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Car Buyers Beware When Buying from a “Buy Here Pay Here” Dealer

POSTED BY: Mark F. Anderson | News

Buy Here Pay Here car dealers sell cars and trucks to persons with bad credit or no credit. The dealers are called Buy Here Pay Here because they finance the cars themselves. There is no credit check as with traditional car sales in which the dealer places the loan with an auto finance company such as Ford Credit or any of the other of hundreds of auto finance companies. The BHPH dealers typically sell older cars often with mileage exceeding 100,000 miles. Some of the cars belong in a junk yard. The dealers will sell a car with little or no...

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