Clean Up Credit Report

Now is the time to learn how to clean up credit report. It really is easy if you get the emotion out of the way.

Credit is dynamic. Not static. What does that term mean? Consider you as a person. If you are breathing , working, going to school,retired and engaged with people and life and laugh and cry and go through all of the situations life sends your way, you would be considered dynamic. If you are hooked up to life support  you might be referred to as static.

This is your credit profile. It is dynamic because it is ever-changing all the time. Like in the example above, credit keeps changing  and is impacted by your spending and paying habits and your credit file changes every day. Does your credit score also change ? The answer is yes. This is why you don’t want to become too attached to your credit report. You are not your credit and a number doesn’t really tell us who you are  .

In a filing cabinet we keep many pieces of data about things that are important to us. For example, take a house-the home you live in. In a file, organized in a drawer, is all kinds of information about the house we are talking about. perhaps when you bought it, how much you paid, the improvements you have made on the house. This too is dynamic because it is changing all the time.

The house needs painting . You may decide to plant grass or flowers  and give the front yard a makeover. Perhaps you want to upgrade some  of the furnishings because they are wearing thin.

Would you let a bunch of data about your  house define you? Does the fact that a house is painted blue or brown , or the fact that it has overgrown shrubs display who you are as a person? If you just had back surgery and were unable to preform physical work in the yard mean you are a bad person? Heavens no.

Why is it then that people give such a huge amount of energy to a credit file and accept the audacious idea  that they are in fact the person in that filing cabinet? I already know what you’re going to say because I am aware of the importance of credit in our society, but hear me out.

Credit does not define you. This file is nothing more than information about your history of financial transactions. Maybe you need to spruce up the yard a bit  . Perhaps you have some weeding to do and you also need a makeover , but you are so much more than a credit score number

When this last economic crisis hit , I sat with several of my clients and the subject was not about loans and funding and real estate deals . Yes, this is my business, but my clients dragged themselves through my door to talk about credit and the climate that had shattered their dreams. Many of them cried and all of them were concerned for the future. How to repair bad credit was the main thing on their mind.

I pulled their credit reports and saw the obvious. With good planning they could do some credit report repair. They had hope. Many of these formerly solid individuals were swimming upstream. Their files reflected this problem. Late payments. Some in foreclosure and still others had sought protection through bankruptcy. According to their credit reports, they were having problems dealing with the financial trauma our nation is currently in.

Does this mean they are no good thieves? Liars? Debt skippers ready for prison or years of restitution? Of course not. Credit, like houses needs a credit report repair too. They need to be remodeled and sometimes a good dose of paint will freshen them up. But would you burn down a house because the weeds need to be pulled? Does the fact that some facia needs repairing mean you dump the home?

Credit, like life, is dynamic. Today’s 500 credit score can easily be tomorrow’s 800 credit score. You just need to work in the yard to and learn how to repair bad credit.