Practical solutions to financial problems
Information on credit, how to establish it, improve your score or repair bad credit
If some change in your circumstances such as serious illness, loss of your job, divorce, etc. sends your financial life into a tailspin your credit score is likely to suffer. How much it suffers of course depends on how bad your circumstances get before you get on track. Some things are easier to recover from … Continue reading
A budget is a great tool to help you reach your financial goals. Nearly everyone in the personal finance world repeatedly beats the budgeting drum, for good reason. Here are some common budget mistakes and how you can avoid them. Not having a budget at all – This of course is obvious. It’s the biggest … Continue reading
What do you do if your identity has been stolen despite your best efforts to protect yourself from identity theft? Unfortunately, if you’ve been a victim of identity theft it could take quite a long time to clean up the damage the thief does to you. One of the things that makes this crime such … Continue reading
If you’ve gotten yourself into a financial mess that’s damaged your credit score and you want to fix it and improve your credit score, follow the twelve steps below and you’ll get results. This is not a quick fix but it will get you lasting results. It can take up to several years to complete … Continue reading
Every now and then I go looking for statistics on debt. I’ve seen a number of articles stating that consumer debt actually went down in the last quarter of 2010. So I went looking for statistics and charts. What I found confirmed the reports about the last quarter but also showed a pretty grim picture … Continue reading
Is it important to protect your credit rating? Lenders are more likely to lend to people with good credit scores. The higher the score the less risk to the lender. Theoretically anyway. That may or may not be a good thing. Let’s face it – consumer indebtedness is out of control so access to more … Continue reading
This post is a follow up to last month’s post, The Truly Important Things in Life. A comment I received on that post plus Jeff’s post Still Sustainable? on Sustainable Life Blog a few days ago and recent posts by Beks about her dad on her blog, Blogging Away Debt got me thinking about balance … Continue reading
Organization and good financial health go together. The opposite is also true, disorganization and poor financial health go together as well. It takes a bit of organization and paperwork to get and keep your finances in good shape. I’ve been there. “No time to do a budget.” Don’t want to bother with a check register … Continue reading
If you have bad credit and no collateral and you’re looking for a loan, you’re kind of walking through a mine field. Unsecured bad credit loans are advertised by both legitimate lenders and rip-off artists. The best way to keep from getting ripped off on such a loan is don’t apply for one. An Internet … Continue reading
When planning to purchase a home, paying off your credit card debts is the correct thing to do. Closing the accounts is not. Leave them open with a zero balance. When you close your credit card accounts you potentially kill your chances of qualifying for a loan. The FICO scoring system takes all of the … Continue reading
