<div class="block">Bad credit means fewer opportunities. Nathalie Noisette spoke with Cheddar News on how consumers can get back on track with their credit scores.</div>

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Be Well: Fixing Your Bad Credit

Bad credit can be a major roadblock making it so much harder to get a mortgage or even get a car loan. It can even raise your health insurance premiums. It can keep you from getting hired on a job, so many downfalls to having bad credit. But there are a lot of ways to really rebuild your credit and you don't have to let a low score hold you back. So joining us now is Natalie Noisette Financial strategist with credit conversion dot org. Thank you so much for being here. I mean I've used your service in the past. There are so many of people out here that need this type of help to fix their credit. But what would you say is a good credit score? I would say anything over 7 20 would be ideal because it puts you in the prime candidacy for the greatest lending interest rates and overall great financial position. Ok. So there are a lot of folks out there. Yeah, I'm talking about you my friends that are out there that don't have that credit. Yeah, we're gonna get you there. So if you do have a low credit score in 7 20. What are the first things you need to do to start getting that score up? Ok. Well, typically the thing that hurts people's credit scores the most is payment history. So if you have a poor payment history, the thing you wanna do is start building a payment history. There are a lot of services and um possibilities around building payment history and resources that will allow you to do. So. So how long does it take to fix your credit? Because you know a lot of people they wanna move now, they wanna buy another the card now but they're like I can't until I fix it. Yeah, so this is something you should plan for at least a year in advance. Oh my gosh a year. Yeah. Ok so what are some of the good things for your credit score? We know a lot of the bad things late payment, you're not paying it all. Uh even closing your credit card can be a bad thing that can have negative uh negative components to your score. So what are some good things that can help our score? Yeah, so definitely paying on time like you mentioned big big one. actually utilization so making sure that you don't use too much of your available credit and I know it sounds counterintuitive credit, you should be able to use it. I know it sounds counterintuitive but you actually do get penalized if you use anything over 30% of your available credit. So that means if you have a credit card and your threshold, you have an allow to spend $10,000. For example, you don't wanna spend more than 30% of that $10,000. You do not. Oh, what's the point of having it? I'm just saying it's, it's they want you to know that you have it but they don't want you to rely on it. Ok? Got you. Ok. So uh there's a myth out there that if you look at your credit score too much, it can have a negative effect on your credit score. What do you think about that? No, actually you should look at your credit score as much as humanly possible. Yes, you should. It what is, what is penalized is when other people look at your credit score? So if someone is making a lending decision about you, that's when you get penalized. So where can we go to look at our credit score? Because a lot of people don't even know what their credit score is. Yeah, so my is a really great place because the most accurate exper dot com actually has a really good resource as well for monitoring. Ok. And they also have other resources that you would recommend people look into. What are those? Yeah, so um self lender is number one, my favorite, not sponsored, but I just love them. I use them till this day. What is that? What do they do? So, self lender works where they open up a CD on your behalf. A CD is a certificate of deposit and every time you pay into the certificate of deposit, how it works is that they are reporting that on time payment for you. And they're actually going to give you every single dollar that you've paid back into that certificate of deposit as like a savings account. So it's like you're lending against yourself. I love that. It's a lot safer than a credit card. It's less safer than a credit card. Ok, I like this, more resources. Yes. Yes. So uh or grow credit, they kind of work similar. Um they are where the Netflix or the Hulu kind of come into play. So they, they no interest. We love no interest, right? Because interest is not in your interest, so no interest. Um they, they don't really require any thing to qualify and we love that because it doesn't harm your credit score as far as the inquiry. So someone else looking into your credit, the good thing about those is that whenever you, it's tied to your bank account, so they are going to make a payment for you when you make a payment to Netflix or Hulu and it's tied to you and then they were gonna report that positive payment for you. I love that. Now there are a lot of people out there that have things on their credit report that doesn't even belong to them. What do we do if we see something on our credit report? It was like, that's not my car, that's not, that was old, that was 10 years ago. What do they do? You have to reach out to the bureaus and you have to let them know that they, you have to request an investigation when you say reach out. What do you mean by, reach out? like call them on the phone? Yes. So there are typically by, by mail, you want to keep a paper trail because they can definitely say that they didn't get a notice from you or that um, they didn't get in time or some other erroneous claim. So you wanna reach out by pay by mail. Typically you want to certify that, that notice and let them know that you wanna reach out to them, you got the letter, it keeps, you keeps them accountable and it shows that you are intentional about handling this thing. Investigate them, ask them to in excuse me, ask them to investigate the claim and ask them to look into this profile and make sure that it's actually being tied to you. So I know there are people like me who don't wanna do all that. So they just call you and you do that for them. But I have a friend who would literally get on the phone and he was like, I'm calling the bureaus and he'll call them himself and it's that easy for somebody to contact them and say this is, is not accurate information. Well, some, for some people it's really, it's really overwhelming. It's really overwhelming. It's hard to face either your credit score, your finances. It's, there's a lot of jargon that goes into it. A lot of numbers. Um, but I do have a resource in the book that is very insightful. It's resourceful, it's streamlined, it gives you all the resources you need the letters. It's very supportive and it tells you everything that you need to do to kind of address that part of the credit score. What's the title of the book? Convert It? Uncover the Hidden Strategies. You need to easily achieve massive credit score success. I like that. So all of the information we went through that you can find there in the book and get the help you need to fix your credit score. All right. And if you have a real common name, you gotta check that too because you could be on somebody else's credit. So, all right. Thank you so much financial strategist, Natalie noise. Appreciate your time. Thank you for having me. All right.