If you are living in debt and want to make your life more manageable you need debt advice, in order to get rid of your debts. You may shy away from seeking out professional help because you think that you will have to pay the fees for the advice that you will get. So in this situation, getting debt advice free of cost can only be a very good thing.

4 tips that you can get from credit counselors

Some debt advice free of cost that can be provided by the credit counselors are:

Stop using credit cards: You usually use credit cards unnecessarily, and that is the reason why your bills are so high. You should immediately stop the use of credit card and use cash instead, while doing any purchase. It is a proven fact that you tend to spend more without noticing, when you are paying with your credit card, until your bills accumulate. In emergency purposes only, you can use the credit card with the lowest interest rate.

Pay off the highest interest debt first: Arrange your debts from the highest interest rate to the lowest and start paying off the cards with the highest interest rate, as this is your greatest burden. When the highest card is paid off, proceed to pay off the second highest rate and continue to do this until all your credit card debts are paid off. In this way your debt will be eliminated faster.

Do some saving: Commit yourself to saving which is indeed very important for you. Don’t spend on unnecessary purchase; rather buy those things that you need. You can transfer the money that you are saving into your saving account to initiate the saving habit. In order to pay off your debts quickly, make and stick to your financial budget.

Contact and negotiate: If your financial problems are serious, and you cannot afford to pay your debts, try to contact and negotiate with your creditor for a lower interest rate. If they agree, then you have to make less monthly payments.

Thus, seeking debt advice free of cost can really prove beneficial to you. If you follow them carefully, then you will quickly and effectively get out of debt.

Additional resources:

www.the-credit-repair-blog.com

Credit repair is not a complicated matter. It is simply about following the rules laid out and addressing them in the proper manner. When the steps are followed it is very easy to improve most credit scores. 80% of all credit reports contain errors. It’s very easy to remove errors. They come off immediately. Removing accurate negative items from your credit reports is also not complicated. Again, you simply need to follow the rules, write the proper credit dispute letters, and use any leverage you can if negotiation becomes necessary. There are many guides available. Our favorite ebook comes free when you purchase Credit-Aid Software. It explains very clearly in simple english how to address disputes and negotiate removal of negative items.

7 Basic steps to improve your credit score

1. Correct all inaccuracies on your Credit Report. 

Go through your credit reports very carefully. Especially look for; late payments, charge-offs, collections or other negative items that aren’t yours, accounts listed as “settled,” “paid derogatory,” “paid charge-off” or anything other than “current” or “paid as agreed” if you paid on time and in full, accounts that are still listed as unpaid that were included in a bankruptcy, negative items older than seven years (10 in the case of bankruptcy) that should have automatically fallen off your report (you must be careful with this last one, because sometimes scores actually go down when bad items fall off your report. It’s a quirk in the FICO credit-scoring software, and the potential effect of eliminating old negative items is difficult to predict in advance). Also make sure you don’t have duplicate collection notices listed. For example; if you have an account that has gone to collections, the original creditor may list the debt, as well as the collection agency. Any duplicates must be removed!

2. Make sure that your proper credit lines are posted on your Credit Reports. 

Often, in an effort to make you less desirable to their competitors, some creditors will not post your proper credit line. Showing less available credit can negatively impact your credit score. If you see this happening on your credit report, you have a right to complain and bring this to their attention. If you have bankruptcies that should be showing a zero balance…make sure they show a zero balance! Very often the creditor will not report a “bankruptcy charge-off” as a zero balance until it’s been disputed.

3. If you have any negative marks on your credit report, negotiate with the creditor/lender to remove it.

If you are a long time customer and it’s something simple like a one-time late payment, a creditor will often wipe it away to keep you as a loyal customer. If you have a serious negative mark (such as a long overdue bill that has gone to collections), always negotiate a payment in exchange for removal of the negative item. Always make sure you have this agreement with them in writing. Do not pay off a bill that has gone to collections unless the creditor agrees in writing that they will remove the derogatory item from your credit report. This is important; when speaking with the creditor or collection agency about a debt that has gone to collections, do not admit that the debt is yours. Admission of debt can restart the statute of limitations, and may enable the creditor to sue you. You are also less likely to be able to negotiate a letter of deletion if you admit that this debt is yours. Simply say “I’m calling about account number ___________” instead of “I’m calling about my past due debt.” 

4. Pay all credit cards and any revolving credit down to below 30% of the available credit line. 

The scoring system wants to make sure you aren’t overextended, but at the same time, they want to see that you do indeed use your credit. 30% of the available credit line seems to be the magic “balance vs. credit line” ratio to have. For example; if you have a credit card with a $10,000 credit line, make sure that never more than $3000 (even if you pay your account off in full each month). If your balances are higher than 30% of the available credit line, pay them down. Here is another thing you can try; ask your long time creditors if they will raise your credit line without checking your FICO score or your credit report. Tell them that you’re shopping for a house and you can’t afford to have any hits on your credit report. Many will not but some will.

5. Do not close your old credit card accounts. 

Old established accounts show your history, and tell about your stability and paying habits. If you have old credit card accounts that you want to stop using, just cut up the cards or keep them in a drawer, but keep the accounts open. 

6. Avoid applying for new credit. 

Each time you apply for new credit, your credit report gets checked. New credit cards will not help your credit score and a credit account less than one year old may hurt your credit score. Use your cards and credit as little as possible until the next credit scoring. 

7. Have at least three revolving credit lines and one active (or paid) installment loan listed on your Credit Report.

The scoring system wants to see that you maintain a variety of credit accounts. It also wants to see that you have 3 revolving credit lines. If you do not have three active credit cards, you might want to open some (but keep in mind that if you do, you will need to wait some time before rescoring). If you have poor credit and are not approved for a typical credit card, you might want to set up a “secured credit card” account. This means that you will have to make a deposit that is equal or more than your limit, which guarantees the bank that you will repay the loan. It’s an excellent way to establish credit. Examples of an installment loan would be a car loan, or it could be for furniture or a major appliance. In addition to the above, having a mortgage listed will bring your score even higher.

Throughout this process, always remember:

It takes up to 30 Days for any of these things to get reported and often longer to reflect on your credit history Reports. It feels like a slow process, but hang in there, because it DOES work. 

This tedious process can be made much simpler with the automated help of Credit-Aid™ Software www.credit-aid.com . Credit-Aid™ stores your user information to merge into its database of letters, saving you many long hours of letter writing.

Additional resources:

Credit-Repair Business Opportunity

www.the-credit-repair-blog.com

Collection agencies are often known to be aggressive with their collection efforts and can go to any extent to torment the customer to pay them. But you might not always have to bow down to their pressure, if you know your rights as a consumer mentioned in the FDCPA.

The debt collector can be held liable for violating the law and the consumer can take legal action against the collector for such violations. Following are the most common FDCPA violations by debt collectors.

Calling at unusual time: Debt collectors are barred from contacting the debtor at odd times i.e. before 8 a.m. in the morning and after 9 p.m. in the evening.
Not disclosing identity: While contacting the debtor the collector must divulge

His identity or alias

Name of his company- Allied Interstate, Cach LLC or NCO and

Name of the original creditor – AMEX, Bank of America etc.

 Non disclosure would mean violation of laws. Also, the debt collector might not represent themselves as law enforcement officials.

Contacting neighbors and relatives: When the phone number or the address of the debtor is available with the collection agency, the CA must not call neighbors and relatives of the debtor and discuss his debt issues with them.

Using abusive language and profane: The collector mustn’t also use profane and abusive language while contacting the debtor. Threatening one to cause harm to his family or to get him laid off from his job is considered as FDCPA violation.

Threatening with lawsuit and jail term: The debt collector must also refrain himself from threatening one with lawsuit when no case has been filed. Similarly, threatening one with imprisonment is also a violation of consumer right.
The FDCPA has the provision which allows the customer to seek compensation from the debt collector if he has been wronged. The customer can sue the collection agency and collect $1000 in compensation if there is a violation of FDCPA.

Additional resources:

www.the-credit-repair-blog.com

Enable Akismet

Akismet is a WordPress plugin that comes default with every installation. Akismet is a real-time adaptive spam filter which scans all incoming comments and helps you automatically filter spam comments by stopping them at their source.

In order to use Akismet you must first get an API Key from WordPress. The API Key is free, but it does require you visiting their site and creating an account. Please visit http://www.wordpress.com/signup. Enter your personal information and at the bottom choose “Just a username, please.”

Once you have created and verified your account, log in at http://www.wordpress.com/wp-login.php. Click on the “Profile” link and you will see at the very top, your WordPress.com API Key. We’re going to use this soon so keep it available to you by recording it somewhere.

Go back to your Netfirms WordPress installation:

1. Log in to your WordPress Dashboard and click on the Plugins link
2. Click “Activate” for the plug in Akismet
3. You will see a yellow box with a link asking you to enter your WordPress.com API Key that you created earlier.
4. Once entered, click “Update options” to enable Akismet.

For the vast majority of blogs on the Internet, Akismet alone will eliminate 99% of the spam comments that are generated. There are some other features you may enable on your blog to increase your spam protection.

For more information on Akismet, as well for further assistance should you find Akismet reporting a large amount of false-positives, please visit http://www.akismet.com

Discussion Settings

Under the Settings menu in the “Disucssion” subsection you will see a section which lists 3 options that will apply before a comment appears on your blog. The bottom two options ‘Comment Author must fill out name and email’ as well as ‘Comment author must have a previously approved comment’ are by default checked. We recommend leaving this checked however you may, if you find spam getting past Akismet often enable the option that an Administrator must approve all new comments.

Comment Moderation is another option you may use. You may change the amount of allowed URLs or links from it’s default value of 2 by setting it to 1. This allows the comment to contain 1 link before it is placed in a moderation queue. Setting this to 0 will mean all comments will be placed in the moderation queue.

Be careful with the word lists offered in Comment Moderation and Comment Blacklist. If you were to type the word “ass” it would block the word assistance or assume. WordPress offers a list of words you may use in the Comment Moderation box available at http://codex.wordpress.org/Spam_Words

Require users to register in order to comment

This is a setting available under Settings menu in the “General” subsection. Most spam bots are not designed to register on a WordPress site so this will effectively put an end to any spammers, but it may also decrease the amount of comments people leave on your blog. This should only be a last resort.

Going Further Beyond WordPress

WordPress’ plugin archecture means you can increase your anti-spam protection even further by using plugins which are available for free at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/. Typical plugins that are used to increase the protection of your account would be to add a CAPTCHA image or security image test on each comment. You can browse thousands of freely available WordPress plugins at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/.