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The first thing is getting your credit and maintaining your credit. So obviously if you think that credit is the most horrible thing in the world and you want to stay away from it, unfortunately you can’t do that if ever you plan on getting a car or buying a home. You need credit, because that’s how they judge your responsibility when it comes to money and finances, and that’s how they judge you on whether they’re going to get paid back and if you’re a safe bet.
So first of all, if you’ve got to get credit, the easiest way is to just go out and get like a $500 credit card. Even if it’s a pay as you go one, just get it so you can start building your credit. Then, secondly, when you get the credit card, you need to make the payments. All right?
So there’s a couple of ladies who are very concerned. They’re like, “Oh, I was five days late on my credit card payment. Am I going to get hit?” No. You’re probably OK on that front. Where you need to be concerned is if you go for a full 30 day cycle. So if you miss a payment for a full 30 days, chances are the credit bureau’s caught that and they’re going to ding you for it.
Now, the second thing is I see a lot of people with horrible credit who have got horrible credit for a ridiculous reason, and what this reason is is that a lot of credit cards, especially the store credit cards like the Zellers cards and the Canadian Tire and Staples and Brick cards, they actually have annual fees on them. A lot of people don’t know that. They’ll get them in the mail and they’ll go, “Oh, right. Geez, I signed up for this thing once. I’m just going to snip it up, never actually use it.”
Don’t do that, because if you do, there’s an annual fee that is slowly accumulating, and all of a sudden you’ve gone into collections on a $5 fee. I’m serious, this happens all the time. Be very aware of annual fees. Often, you can choose between an annual fee and low interest or a no fee card. Always go for the no fee card unless you carry a balance, and then go for the low interest one, but be aware that you do have an annual fee and you need to make those payments on those annual fees.
Now, the third thing is actually a huge misconception, which is that having a lot of credit cards is a horrible thing. It actually isn’t. It’s actually the complete opposite. Now, you need to think of the credit bureau as a mathematical computer algorithm. They don’t have a person sitting there figuring out what, logically, you should have as a credit score. It’s all mathematical.
So if you think of it this way: if you have one credit card and you miss one payment, you are in 100 percent default. Whereas if you have five credit cards and miss one credit card payment on one of those cards, you’re now only one fifth in default. See how that works?
Likewise, when it comes to your credit ratio, never have a $10,000 card and go, “You know what? I don’t want to have $10,000 given access to me because I’ll actually spend it. I’m just going to go and call the card company and have them reduce that credit amount to $5,000.” Don’t do that.
Again, look at the algorithm: if you have one $10,000 card and you’ve spent $10,000 on that card, your ratio is maxed out. You look like you’re not responsible with money because you’re always at the max. Whereas if you have, say, three cards and they each have $5,000 on them and you’ve spent the same $10,000, now you’ve got at least a $5,000 buffer and you’re only two thirds maxed out. You see how that works?
So, having more credit is not a bad thing. Being maxed out on more credit is a bad thing. And missing payments is a bad thing. But you’ve got to think of the ratios. So if you have any questions about this maybe your credit’s is bad, maybe you don’t have any credit give me a call. We’ve got to get you started on the right path to building that.
If you have great credit and you want to start using it to buy a home or something along those lines, give ma a call. I’ll let you know what we can do for you. So my phone number is 604 313 9996. You can go to my blog. I have all my other contact information there, too, if you want to fill out an application online or email me, and that’s at http://mortgagesinvancouver.com.
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