Credit Score Overview
A credit score is not the amount of purchase that you incurred with your credit card and neither does the term refer to the points that you save for every purchase that you make with the credit card. This is not the meaning of a credit score.
Although it does involve credit per se, it does not only refer to credit cards but to credit in general, or in more common terms, a loan. A credit score is the numerical product of your credit history, from the loans that you incurred in college to the purchases that you make with your credit card. All are being recorded and filed under one credit history that can come back and hunt you if you are not careful.
A credit score is used by banks and lending companies to make decisions on your loan applications. With a not so good credit score, you may get rejected for a loan or if you are lucky will be given a fraction of the amount that you are asking, for a higher interest rate and a shorter payment period.
A credit score, you see, determines whether a person is reliable enough to be given the money to as a loan. For although, they will be earning from you through the interest rates that they put on the loan, banks and lending companies are still cautious because they do know that they cannot just lend their money to people they don’t know if able to handle money.
A credit score depends on a lot of factor. One of which is your reputation as a borrower. Are you always late in your payments for your credit card? Are you always knee deep in debt because you cannot seem to get around to paying each one until the interests were just too high?
Do you have maxed out credit cards? Have you had any other credit or loan that you have paid for or are still paying? How many are they? Have you had any problems paying for your loans? These will figure in the credit score that you will have.
Other considerations that make up your credit score is income that you are receiving currently. People who have high income are generally perceived as someone who can handle a loan. Another factor besides the ability to pay factor is the amount of debt that you have. If the bank feels that it is too much debt for one person, they can easily reject your application.
There are many ways to get a credit score. The industry standard is the FICO score, named after its creator Fair Isaac Corporation. FICO score is being used by credit reference agencies, that will gather the materials about your credit history and then determine from their the credit score. Some use their own scoring systems that are comparable with the FICO score.
The FICO credit score can now be determined by purchasing it over the internet through the website of credit reference agency, Equifax. The fee is $12.95. The other two credit agencies, TransUnion and Exparian are also selling their own score for roughly the same amount although TransUnion packaged it with their credit history report that people can purchase online.
So now you know what the meaning of a credit score is? Let’s hope you will work on your own credit score.
For more information on credit scores visit Stuart Drossner and his blog at Stuart-Drossner.com.
I Need Debt Help
Gas prices rising, talk of a recession, mortgage crisis, layoffs, cut backs and americans in debt. Sounds bad doesn’t it, well it is worse than you think.
Recent statistics show that americans are carrying larger balances on their credit cards and even using credit cards to pay off large bills each month suchs as auto loans, mortgage loans, and even other credit cards. How can you stop the cycle and get back into a positive cash flow? First you need to have a stabile income that is 20-30% above your monthly obligations for the month. Do not even think about your credit card balances at the moment. Pay the minimum, but focus on a job or income that has you at a comfortable level.
Second look at your household budget. Besides the credit cards what fat can you cut away. Most americans are spending way too much money on things like food, clothes, entertainment, and more. Food being an expense that every household can cut back 20-30%. If you take a moment and add up every dollar you spend eating out you will end up with a larger total than you think. A snack here, a drink there, a pizza for dinner, going out to eat a few times a week, all this is major money spent.
Take a hard look at your cable, phone and internet bill. Would bundling your services with a local provider save you even $75 per month.
We also recommend that you breakdown your insurance bills. Mortgage insurance, home insurance, car insurance, and health insurance. Go back to your insurance agent and push for discounts, if you have the same agent for car and home insurance you may be able to find savings by talking to your agent.
Ok so, we locked in a stabile income and we cut some fat from your monthly budget. Now we can take a look at the credit cards.
There are two debt help options, debt consolidation or debt settlement.
Debt Consolidation
Debt consolidation services have prearranged debt repayment plans with most credit card and collection companies. When you sign up with a debt consolidation company you are offered a lower overall monthly payment based on a lower interest rate they have arranged with the creditor.
This payment is lower than what the credit card companies offer you, saves you money every month and is often the best way to consolidate debt.
One benefit of a debt consolidation repayment plan is it will stop you from getting harassed by your creditors as long as you make the new, lower monthly payments.
The debt consolidation program benefits you if you have high interest rates or have higher credit card bills than you can manage. Some people like to make only one payment to one company for all of their debts.
Debt Negotiation
Debt negotiation is sometimes referred to as debt settlement. This is most often offered to people who can’t handle a debt consolidation program. If you can’t make the minimum payments of a debt consolidation repayment plan or haven’t made payments in the past 3 months, a debt negotiation program is the next step for solving debt and credit problems.
One benefit of a debt negotiation program is you stop making payments to your creditors. The debt negotiation company either takes monthly payments from you and keeps it in an account, or lets you keep the money in your own account.
While you are making these monthly payments to the debt negotiation company, they negotiate with your creditors for a lower payoff of around 40-50% of your total amount of debt. Once the negotiated settlement is agreed upon with your creditors, the debt negotiation company makes a one time payment to them.
Whatever you decide at this point you need to make a move and focus on getting rid of this credit card debt.
Good Sales Leads
A good sales lead is only as good as your delivery process. What does that mean? It means that a good lead can seem to have less value than a truly bad lead if it is not delivered correctly. A good lead needs to be delivered in real time, in a usable format, posted into a lead management system and to the clients specifications.
When a new lead buyer starts with your company and does not get leads delivered per their request then most of the time lead quality does not matter. A lead buyer that does not get leads on time, in wrong format or has a slow start is going to label your lead company as a bad source. You could have the best sales leads on the market but the perception is that you have bad leads. To assure this does not happen to you is pretty easy and not related to your lead quality at all. It is all about customer service and communication, something some lead generation companies lack.
To start it is best to not be overly aggressive with your start time. An eager lead buyer is good to have but many lead sellers get caught up in agreeing with conditions in order to get the sale. Remember getting the sale in the lead industry is really not hard or the issue. Keeping them as a client is the hard part. So when your new lead buyer says, “Can we start today or tomorrow, I really need to get the leads fast”, you need to take the time to see if you can start the campaign at the requested time. If not just give a starting time you can live up to.
Even though every lead generation company will recommend a lead management system not all lead buyers have them. Why I do not know, but we will save that for a later post. If the client is receiving leads via a lead management system or by email it is best to test the post and assure delivery is set up properly. This can and will delay a scheduled start if your post is not correct.
The biggest factor in the lead delivery process is your delivery rate or speed. A lead buyer that gets 20 leads dumped on them at one time is going to think you do not have real time leads. However; if you are using some high traffic media outlets it is not uncommon to generate leads in burst that can produce 5 or 10 leads over 2-5 minutes. If you do not get these leads to them in an organic real time flow then it is going to be a red flag. You may not even be doing anything wrong but again it is all about perception. To combat this it is highly recommended that lead sellers also use a lead management or lead delivery system. This will assure your clients are getting leads in real time and you can put in delivery filters to assure an organic flow to all your lead buyers.
I know this post is more geared towards the lead seller but it is important for both sides of the equation to have some insight into each others operations. Remember keep the communication up and it is usually easy to work through any issues that may come up during a lead campaign.