One of the rights afforded to us under the Fair Credit Reporting Act is the ability to challenge information on our credit reports with which we do not agree. I addressed several methods of disputing credit entries in this Mint...
When you finally pay off a credit card it feels like an easy next step to celebrate your zero balance by closing your account and forgetting about it once and for all. But before you do so, it’s important to...
I received the following question from a Minter via the Mint.com Facebook page: Question: “John, I just got all of my credit reports for free and there are some items that are old, accurate, and just downright bad. I’d love...
I get this question several times a week and normally avoid the question but because this time it came from a Minter I’ll tackle it. Here’s the question… “Hi John. We are going car hunting in the next month...
Last week the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (hereafter “CFPB”) published a study that suggests the way medical collections are treated by credit scoring systems may overly penalize consumer’s credit scores. The study goes on to suggest scoring systems underestimate the...
This week I received the following email from a Minter regarding charge cards. “John, Last year I finally finished paying off over $7,000 of credit card debt with the help of Consumer Credit Counseling Service. It took me over 2...
We recently received the following question from a Minter via Facebook. It’s about the legality of reporting items to the credit bureaus after they had been removed. Here’s the question: “I recently had an item deleted from my credit report...
“John, I recently applied for a mortgage loan and I thought the broker was going to pull my credit report. Instead, she pulled something she called an “RMCR” credit report. When I looked at the report it didn’t look anything...
“Hello John. Last week, for the first time in many years, I pulled a copy of my credit reports from all three of the credit reporting agencies. It looks considerably different than it did in 2006 but I thought most...
“John, I want to establish credit and I know one of the ways to do so is to open a new credit card. I’ve done some research on the Internet and I’ve seen a bunch of articles about how it’s...