Credit Strategies for People With Perfect Credit
A Deep Dive on Your Credit Score
Even if you're well versed in credit scores, you'll learn something new in this episode!
Credit expert, Patrick Ritchie, joins me to talk about ways people unknowingly hurt their credit, ways you can easily fix it and even a free government resource for rapidly fixing issues when credit card companies are unresponsive.
Join us for our deep dive on credit and it's impact on the different facets of your life.
Links mentioned in this episode:
Time Stamps
00:00 Welcome to the Financial Podcast: A Deep Dive into Credit
00:19 Introducing Patrick Ritchie: The Credit Expert
01:13 The Secrets to Maintaining an 800 FICO Score
04:57 The Dangers of Inactivity and Closing Old Credit Cards
05:49 Strategies for Managing Credit Cards with Annual Fees
10:14 Navigating Identity Theft and Fraud Alerts
13:33 Boosting Your Credit Score: Authorized Users and Co-Signing
26:09 The Power of Freezing Your Credit Report
29:31 Mastering Credit Freezes: A How-To Guide
29:50 The Perils of Losing Your Credit Freeze Password
30:28 Understanding Credit Freezes vs. Fraud Alerts
31:50 Navigating Title Fraud and Identity Theft
37:03 The Importance of Being Cautious with Debit Cards
39:36 Co-Signing Risks and Financial Advice
49:15 The Impact of Financial Decisions on Credit Scores
50:53 Leveraging Consumer Finance Resources
51:50 A Cautionary Tale: The CEO's Credit Crisis
54:45 Closing Thoughts and Resources
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Welcome to the Financial Podcast: Introduction
Hello and welcome to the me financial podcast. I am Michelle Moses, your host. I am a certified financial planner, realtor and former e commerce site owner. And today I am here with Patrick Ritchie and we are going to be talking about all things credit. I took a CE course from him and was just so impressed with all of his knowledge.
And Patrick is a mortgage broker of over 20 years and the author of the credit roadmap. It's a written guide for readers to take control of their credit. He has extensive experience teaching finance at both the Ohio State and Arizona State University and is approved instructor with the Arizona Department of Real Estate and an approved instructor with the Arizona Association of Realtors.
He has a Master of Legal Studies and Bachelor of Science in Business Administration. Welcome. Welcome. Well, thank you, [00:01:00] Michelle. I appreciate you inviting me here. Yeah, thanks so much for coming on. And I do have to say go bucks because I am from, uh, I lived in Columbus, Ohio. We could do an OH or something like that.
Deep Dive into Credit Scores with Patrick Ritchie
So today we're going to talk about credit. And most of my viewers are viewers, uh, listeners, they uh, already have great credit. And so we're going to kind of build off of that of if you already have, you know, a high 700, 800 credit score. What are things that you can do to protect that, uh, maybe even improve it or just, you know, keep it the same way.
And then he has, I know some amazing stories about people that have unknowingly ruined their credit, um, or just, you know, certain things about, um, maybe some identity theft. So that's what we're going to be talking about today.
Maximizing and Protecting High Credit Scores
And, um, so why don't we start off with, you know, so let's say you have an 800 credit score.
And so what are some things that. Those people are normally thinking about, I guess. Yes, so the 800 FICO score crowd, [00:02:00] their biggest danger is not utilizing the credit cards that they already have. Okay. Think about what is going into a, into a credit score, you know, and we're typically talking the FICO score, obviously, there's other scores out there, but from the standpoint of What is feeding that?
What is creating that 800 FICO score? Well, usually it is going to be history. It's, it's how long is that history? So you have a credit card that has an indefinite life. It's an indefinite history. Maybe I've had it for 20 years, 30 years, you know, as long, once it gets to seven years, it really is. um, Oh, so once you have your credit, your credit card for seven years, and you've been paying on it, obviously, and don't have somebody, yeah, you don't have all the 30 days late and things like that then it really, like supercharges, your credit.
It supercharges the credit. And if I, if I had to say what is the most common theme that I see 2800 FICO score, it is that somebody has at least one, but probably more like two or three. Credit cards that they've had [00:03:00] for over seven years, probably well over seven years, probably we're talking decades that they've kept at a low balance that they haven't had any 30 days laid on in the past seven years because it needs to be like under, you need to keep all your balances under 50%, but if under 35 percent is the best, right?
The goal. Okay. So, um, So a lot of times what people do is they have multiple credit cards and then they just use some of the credit on each one of them. And that's the best way to do it. Okay. And to give you an idea, a lot of times I'll see where somebody might have a 740 FICO. And it's because their credit card balances are maybe higher than they normally would be.
Maybe they came back from vacation, maybe it's holiday season, whatever. And so as soon as they pay that balance down, their scores may then jump to 810. Oh, it goes up that quickly. Once it reports again, you know, whenever, you know, the timing, you never know the exact timing because of when a. When a creditor is gonna actually report to the three credit bureaus, but once they do pay that down, it's buoyant.
It will bounce right back. Okay. So, all right, [00:04:00] so that's the good news is you can max out your credit cards 'cause we don't need our credit every single day. Yeah, we don't need it every single month. I mean, I might apply for credit once every couple years. I want to keep it good, but in the same sense, I honestly don't need it to be super, super high.
It's kind of like training for a bodybuilding contest. You can't live your life that way. Yeah. You've got, you can't always be at the eight 20 all the time. It's going to come up and down and up and down. Okay. And fluctuate a little bit. And if I think about the highest FICO score that I've seen on paper, And that would be the classic FICO model of an 8, it was an 841.
Oh, okay. And so he had, you know, the reason he had this 841 is because he had an American Express card that he had had since 1967. Mm hmm. So that tells us another thing. If I close out a credit card, I'm probably going to see my credit score go down depending on what the age of that account was. So the older it is, the better.
The Dangers of Inactivity and Closing Old Accounts
But if I lose it, if I close [00:05:00] it myself, or the biggest pitfall for the 800 FICO score crowd, is that a credit card that they've had a long standing history on gets closed due to inactivity. Inactivity. Is the biggest danger for people with an 800 FICO score. So you wanna make sure you're using whatever credit that you have.
Exactly. Because think about how many, think about how many department store cards you have. Yeah. Maybe you got in the nineties, early two thousands that you haven't used. If you go two to three years without using a credit card. It's very likely going to be closed down due to inactivity and you lose that history.
And I remember years ago, I used to go through my credit report and I would cancel the credit cards that I wasn't using, which was kind of not a good thing, I don't think, because I would cancel, you know, like whatever, JCPenney or Macy's or whatever I wasn't using. Um, and so that might not have been a good thing.
Strategies for Managing Credit Cards and Rewards
And what I think of when you're saying all of this is, so I have these credit cards where I get travel benefits or hotel benefits, right? But they cost money every single year to [00:06:00] have. And what, yeah. So what I'm discovering is that I don't, I'm, you know, like I'm using the Hilton one a lot and I like using Hilton then that's where we travel, whereas the Marriott, Their rewards program isn't as great for us and I'm wanting to cancel that one and so I'm not going to want to keep that one open as long.
Do you see what I'm saying? Like you're not going to want to keep paying the fee so I could see keeping them open if they're free versus like it's a commitment if you're paying that yearly fee and you got to kind of make sure. I guess that's the game that the credit cards are playing, right? Is that some of these people, you are going to keep that credit card for a really long time.
And so it's like a bank. You're not going to switch banks all the time because it's such a pain. Yeah. If I had, if I had a credit card that was charging an annual fee for the rewards program that I'm in. I have to decide is it worth it if it's just 100 a year, you know, 200 a year, not that big of a deal, but in the same sense, even 95, I'm like, no, I'm not going to pay that.[00:07:00]
I've seen people close out because I look at credit reports so often. Where I can't help but look to see, okay, what could have made the score higher? So let's say we have somebody at a seven, at a seven 50, and I'm, I'm looking at it, I'm like, oh, they had a credit card that they had for 20 years and they closed it six months ago, or they closed it 12 months ago.
And so I inevitably will ask, you know, why did you close that Citibank card? Oh, it was rewards card and it was charging me a hundred dollars a year. Yeah. So I close it. I'm like, you probably just lost 70 points. And that's going to increase, right? So it increases their mortgage that much. Yeah, so you, so you have to look at it from a standpoint.
If I'm paying 100 in an annual fee. What is the financial benefit if I'm going to be going to buy a house history? Yeah. And then always be cream of the crop. And sometimes when somebody has really high FICO scores, they start taking it for granted on how they got there. Right. And we all know, you know, pay everything on time.
Don't get any 30 days late. That's the big thing. But making sure that we don't lose that [00:08:00] history. That is, that's the thing that people forget about. Okay. And because they, they look at the 100 annual fee. They're not looking at, Oh, I've got a 20 years. It would take me 20 years to get this account again.
It's worth a hundred dollars, especially if you're going to buy a house. I think if you knew that you were going to stay in your house, then maybe, okay, cancel it, you know, whatever. In 22 years of doing this, I can tell you, I've heard it many, many times. This is the last house I'm ever going to buy. I'm never going to, I'm not getting my credit anymore.
And then they need a house, yeah. They need something. Right. And the one I will never forget, because they swore up and down, like, we will never, ever need a mortgage again, we probably never need to borrow money anymore. Well, their neighbor passed away, and in his will, and this was a house up north, they had the right to buy, to buy the land, and buy, you know, buy the property, which was on their border.
And so they needed a loan because it was more than they had in cash. So, so it was only about a year, two years after they said that we'll never need a [00:09:00] mortgage again. Now, fortunately the credit was still great. It was all good, but you never know. It's, you know, when people, when you think about credit, why do we need credit?
Well, it's opportunity such as, you know, buying my neighbor's land. I don't have a development going in next to my, my property. Or survival, like if I own a business, you know, I'm right, you know, warehouse line of credit to make payroll and slow time. Yeah, I think that's a great way to look at it. That credit is opportunity because it really does open more doors and it allows you to have a lower interest rate and to do more things if you take care of it.
And there's a saying, credit is always cheaper when you don't need it. So when somebody needs a loan, there's usually a cost. Now, if it's opportunity, it's not going to affect them in terms of, okay, you know, maybe they don't qualify because there's been some financial changes. However, if it's opportunity, they probably need it quickly.
And so the better the credit is, the faster things can move. Yeah. I mean, if you get great credit, you can go online and get a loan. No problem. Yeah. If somebody said, Hey Patrick, I need a HELOC in two weeks. [00:10:00] If everything's great. Yeah. They can get HELOC in two weeks. Yeah. Probably don't even need to have an appraisal done and, and so just, you know, it just kind of depends on.
What it is that they need in the speed and the big thing is how much am I paying in the interest and all that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, and I would say as someone, um, with good credit, the thing that I worry about the most is something, uh, adverse happening out of my control, you know, like having identity theft or something like that.
Um, so what happens if something like that happened, you know, like, you know, Let's say something did happen and then I found out that my credit score then went into the, you know, the six hundreds or something because of it. Is there like a letter, like, and then I wanted to move three months later. Is there something that says, Hey, this isn't really me?
Does that, is it? Yeah. So the most important thing in the event of, of identity theft is to get with the creditor who has reported that account on the credit report, get with their fraud department and get an affidavit of, was it an affidavit of, uh, It's a fraud [00:11:00] affidavit. Okay. So get a fraud affidavit.
The fraud affidavit is going to be your declaration that this is not mine, this somebody else without my authorization. So then they would then give that to you. They would give it to me. I would fill in anything that I know about the event, I'm going to fill it out. Now, I probably don't know about the event until I actually saw it on my credit report, which is why we should check our credit report at least once a year just to make sure there's nothing on there that shouldn't be there.
You So you do the fraud affidavits, you give that to them, they should, under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, that should clear it off the credit. Now the problem is when they suspect that the person actually did have a part in opening that account. And it's hard for them to prove, it can be hard for us as a consumer to prove, so always be watching for any hints of identity theft if you start getting.
An odd amount of junk mail out of the blue. Like just watch for, watch for things because you just, you never quite know. I mean, the, the, the, the thieves out there are tricky. [00:12:00] And they're smart. Well, this is where I want to bring up one of my favorite things to tell people. And I told you this before we started was the, uh, what is it called?
Opt out. Oh, the website opt out. Prescreen opt out. Prescreen. com. And it stops all those pre approved credit card. Um, uh, offers coming to your house because I heard that they'll steal those and then it's kind of set them up and, and not only does it just save you mail, but, um, I just think from just a safety standpoint, it's just a good thing to have.
So I've signed up my whole family on that, but there'll be at my house and I'll be like, we're going on opt out pre screen and I, you know, just to like save all of it, you know, you know, it's, it's a good idea because you don't want, you don't want credit card applications. Cause when you have good credit.
You're going to be solicited a lot to get more credit. You don't want credit card accounts, credit card applications going to your old addresses because you just don't know. Oh, I didn't think about that either. So I remember when I, I mean, it's years ago, but when I was in college, there were 70 of us that [00:13:00] lived in one house.
So every year you had, you know, all the different people going out. We had a stack of mail for people who had moved out years ago, and I would say 90 percent of it was credit card application because that was back when they were really pushing the credit cards on college students. And so, so it would just be too easy for somebody to.
Commit fraud. Right. And just have the card sent to that address. Well, and this might be, and this is kind of taking another right turn, I mean, there's just so many ways to go with this, but, so like with the college people and building credit, right? So, okay. So you have a great credit and I do think that that's something that we think about is how do we help our kids?
Also get better credit is so co signing or how does that happen? Yeah.
Helping Your Kids Build Credit: Authorized Users Explained
And so we always have to be careful with co signing, but kind of going back to the idea of keeping credit cards open. If I keep a credit card open, maybe I'm not really using it. Like I have this Best Buy card. I've had for a long time.
I don't really need a whole lot from Best Buy, but at least once a [00:14:00] year I'll go buy something at Best Buy so that I have, you know, so they at least have enough history that they're not going to close it due to inactivity. Okay. So if I wanted to help, my oldest son is 19. My youngest son is 11, so the 11 year old not to worry about right now.
But if I wanted to help out my oldest son to build credit, I could add him on as an authorized user to that Best Buy card. And then that history, you know, he now getting a 15 year history on his credit report, that's going to be a major. So you pick the oldest credit card and then add them as a co signer.
Okay, so you're not. Not as a co signer, but as an authorized user. Authorized user. Okay, so co signer is when they would go get a loan. And you would co sign it. So you don't want to do that, but you want to avoid that if we can. Sometimes you just have to, like, there's no choice. Like, that's just what would have to happen to make what the goal is.
We can't reach the goal without co signing. Sometimes that's like when it comes to buying a car or perhaps when it comes to a mortgage. But adding as an authorized user could definitely make it [00:15:00] better and easier for somebody to qualify. Okay. Because now they're seeing a boost in their credits. Right.
Based on the history of that account. Okay, so using the oldest credit card and then adding them as an authorized user. Okay. That's a, that's a great idea. That's a big one. Yeah, that is a really big one. So, and in that way, So the biggest question I would have is, well, what if the person I'm adding is an authorized user?
The Impact of Authorized User Status on Credit
What if they have any issues on their credit? Does that come back to me? And the answer is no, it's isolated to just that account. Now, legally, what we need to realize as an authorized user is if I add somebody on as an authorized user, I need to really trust that person that they're not going to run it out right.
I don't have to have a card issued to them, but if they got ahold of the card, any charges they make that would never be fraud because sometimes people will call past clients will call and they'll say, Hey, I let my sibling or I let my oldest child, I had him on as an authorized user. They took the credit card and maxed it out.
You know, is that fraud? Well, it's not fraud because you authorize it. Yeah, that's not [00:16:00] fraud. So you actually have to think in those terms of, you know, giving it to a person. That would just be like, oh, I messed up. Sorry. Exactly. So, so that's the thing that people need to be aware of. And it's, it's a nice, you know, it's, it's.
Yeah, I think that's a really great idea. Yeah. Like what a quick way. Cause you can just go online and add an authorized user onto your credit card. Yeah. Now I have to tell you the other side, there's two way street. So here's the downside to it. If I added somebody to a credit card as an authorized user, and then, let's say I get sick, and my bills don't get paid, and that account becomes bad, it's going to affect the authorized user.
And I've seen that on credit reports where I'm like, oh my gosh, we have to get this authorized user account off because You're probably 150 points lower than you should be because of the negative history from this authorized user account. Sometimes people get added on as an authorized user and they didn't even know they were added on.
Right, like a husband and wife. Even roommates. I've seen like, oh, my roommate added me. I don't even know why they did that. And, and, and then the roommate stopped making [00:17:00] the payment. So you literally could have, you could have a charged off credit card that's reporting on somebody's credit report. Where the account doesn't belong to them.
Oh my gosh. That they were operate. Well, no wonder you gotta check your credit report. And so now we're trying to unwind that. And so that's why my advice when somebody wants to buy a house is let's get started early, let's make sure there's no unforeseen circumstances that we need to address. 'cause we can unwind that we can, you know, there's definitely ways we can get that taken care of.
But if you wanna buy and close in the next 30 days.
Navigating Credit Challenges and Solutions
you know, okay, you might be paying a higher interest rate as a result of not at least getting that credit look. Right. And if we look a couple of months ahead of time, then you can fix it. 60 days, we're good. Oh, really? If we're trying to get from 20 to 30.
Because, yeah, I mean, because I utilize the Consumer Finance, uh, what is it, ConsumerFinance. gov, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's website. If a creditor does not, If they, if they do not remove the information that shouldn't be there, if they don't do it in a, you know, relatively expedient manner, you know, usually we give them 30 [00:18:00] days.
We can't do that. But if we need to, we can file a complaint through the CFPB. And I've seen a lot of great outcomes in doing it that way. Because basically, if you've ever called customer service and got frustrated because number one, you're on hold, they don't care. They're not empowered to make any decisions to help the consumer perhaps.
Especially if you have anything that's in a grey area. Now being removed from an authorized user account, I wouldn't call that a grey area. Like, it's not my account if I'm an authorized user. But it is on my credit report and it is factoring into my, into my credit score. So it does definitely cause me, it does cause an impact to me.
Getting it removed should be simple, but it's not always that simple. And I'll give you an example. I had, had a client where her score was probably, probably a hundred points lower than it should have been. She's trying to, she was trying to refinance at the time. Her father had passed away. He had added her on as an authorized user so that she could go to the pharmacy and get his medications for him, just made it easier, [00:19:00] rather than him trying to reimburse her.
Well, when he passed away, there was nothing in the estate, and so the credit cards just didn't get paid, which is pretty sad. unsecured. It just gets charged off. Well, since it was on her credit report, it went 30 days late, 60 days late, 90 days late, 120 days late, so they had somebody to go after 180 when they can't go after her, but she now has 180 days delinquency on her father's credit card on her credit report.
And then it just shows charge off. Now, the collection can't show up on her credit report because she's not, she's just not the right user. She's not a borrower. She's not a cosigner. It's just that there's 180. It's there. So it's 180 is delinquent. So now what happens is her other credit cards, they start looking at it like, Oh, we better lower her credit limit because something bad's going on.
So that's another reason to monitor. But we have to have this awareness that if I'm going to be on as an authorized user or if I'm going to add somebody on as an authorized user, This isn't something we just set and forget. We need to make sure that we're paying attention to it [00:20:00] because if mom and dad have added their kids on as an authorized user or their grandkids, well, if mom and dad start getting sick, you know, mom and dad pass away, these, these things will have adverse.
You need to have, you need to be aware of how that's going to affect you too. And so she spent about four months trying to get it off of her credit report with the big bank, who was the credit card issuer. And they just kept saying, fax us the death certificate, fill out this form, fill out this affidavit.
Oh, I know that game well. So when I looked, I said, you know, I got a better idea. Let's just file a complaint with the government, which would be the CFPB, which would be the consumerfinance. gov. She filed her complaint with them. So in going around and around and around with customer service, the difference in filing a complaint on consumerfinance.
gov is. point that now it's going to a complaint because it's a complaint to the government agency that enforces you there. You know, any you know the laws and the requirements that that bank has to follow. [00:21:00] And so now it's going to compliance is going to the legal department. It's not going to customer service customer service doesn't have the power to do things quickly Or doing things, and that's where you wanna get to is legal.
What I mean mean it's the same thing when you're dealing with like an insurance policy. Yeah, exactly. So what's happening is now a complaint comes into the legal department or the compliance department from the CFPB directly to say there is a consumer complaint against you guys, here's what it is. And they say, oh, well let's make this go away as fast as possible.
Oh, you're on as an authorized user to a deceased client of ours. Okay. We can do that. We can remove that. But even in the gray areas of, I'll give you a quick example, somebody, let's say they know, they know they're going to be 30 days late on Sunday. And so they call their creditor and say, Hey, it's Friday afternoon.
It's going to be 30 days late on Sunday. I need to make a payment today. Do I need to make it online? Should I come into a branch? I need to make sure I don't get 30 days late. And they say, Oh, just make it online. It'll be fine. But that person didn't realize, oh, we're in Arizona, [00:22:00] and so, you know, we're behind the East Coast, and so they make it, but it's not prior to the cutoff, and it doesn't hit their account until Monday, so they end up 30 days late.
So technically speaking, yes, they were 30 days late. They actually were 30 days late. They tried to prevent that from happening by calling that creditor and saying, Hey, I realize I'm going to be 30 days late. I have the money and you make the payment. What's the best method to make the payment and they were giving incorrect information.
Yeah. And so it's that gray area of yes, that consumer was 30 days late. However, they did make the effort to try to avoid that. And they were given bad information by the creditors representative or employees. So in, in that type of a gray area, yeah. That's where the CFPB can really come in handy for consumers and filing that complaint through the consumer through consumerfinance.
gov to say, here's what happened. And I've seen several times where that where they're where the creditors say there's nothing we can do about it. Stop calling us to where it gets reversed and they get an [00:23:00] apology. Wow. So you use consumerfinance. gov a lot. Yeah, that that is for, for, because keep in mind, I'm a mortgage broker who just knows a lot about credit.
It's the quickest way to do it and it's free doesn't come. Yeah. I see people sign up for all those credit repair stuff and, and they just, they're kind of like in this sludging a lot. Like they're just, they're just paying monthly stuff to, to really have stuff pushed around and they're not getting any action and stuff might be removed, but then it's put back on there.
So. If it were me, if I had a problem, that's how I'm going to. You just go straight to that website. And so consumerfinance. gov is there to help dispute things that the credit agency or the credit cards put on there. Right. It's anything to challenge one of their coming from a lender, any, any, any institution that is within the scope of the consumer financial protection bureau.
[00:24:00] They, they, they. They're the enforcement agency. So basically anything that would be on the credit report. I did have one recently where it did not fall within their jurisdiction and so they kicked it back and said we can't, we can't do anything with this. And it was because it was one of the, one of the cell phone carriers.
People hear these commercials that say, bring us your cell phone. We'll give you a brand new switch from one carrier over to us. We'll, we'll give you a brand new cell phone and buy out your old, old one. But here's the problem. People don't read the fine print. People have a major, major problem reading fine print or they don't understand it.
And so they think, well, I can just stop paying my bill to company a because now I'm a company B. They gave me a new phone. They said, they're going to buy out my old one. And then they end up in collection with company because they didn't they didn't pay off the first phone. Yes. And so there's steps to it.
It's not magic money that just all of that. So people need to pay attention to that. And so I see these collections show up [00:25:00] on credit reports from cell phone carriers. Well, since that's they're not a lender, if it's directly from the credit or if it's on the credit report directly from the cell phone carrier.
That's not in the jurisdiction of the CFPB. So consumerfinance. gov is specifically for credit cards and mortgages? Correct. Any lending? Any, yeah, exactly. Okay. So it's good for probably 95 percent of the problems that consumers might encounter. Okay. Alright. Well, that's very interesting. Yep. Yeah, that's nice.
Um, and then, so that kind of comes up with other things that if you think that there is something that happens, Bye. Bye. You know, um, that happens on your credit report. Like, if I'm ever suspicious or there's things where I'm starting to get, like, some fishy emails, I just go on the credit agencies and I put a fraud alert on there for six months.
Instead of, like, paying these companies to watch my credit. You know, or give me a, you know, or to give me updates on what's going on with my credit. I feel like that we can do that ourselves now, like, [00:26:00] because I feel like there's all these companies out there that are, um, trying to sell us these services and I don't feel like we really need them.
Here, here's how I view it.
Freezing Credit vs. Fraud Alerts: Best Practices
If I, the best method is probably to just freeze my credit report, which is essentially making it. I'm just making my credit report inaccessible. So that's not a fraud alert. That's not a fraud alert. I'm just making my credit report inaccessible. So that way if somebody, so when I, so I'll give you an example, like this is firsthand.
When I go to pull somebody's credit report, if their credit report is frozen, nothing comes back. So I have their, I have all their information. I have their social security number. I have their date of birth. I have their address. I have their full name. I have all, I have all, there's five critical points that you need to pull a credit report.
I have all the points. But I can't pull it because it's frozen. So when it's frozen, it's inaccessible by any third party. So I can't access it until they unfreeze it. Once they unfreeze it, boom, it's instantaneous. I can immediately pull it through and we're good to go. So freezing is the best thing to do because if I just [00:27:00] add, if I just add a, like a fraud alert to my credit report, or even if I just add like a fraud statement, if I do anything like that, then All that's doing is it's there, but it's not preventing anything.
If I freeze my credit report, I'm actually preventing the act from occurring in the first place, because they couldn't access my credit. So if somebody had my social security number and had a fake ID with my information on it, and let's say they go to Home Depot and they apply for a Home Depot credit card.
Well, if they have all my information, well, it should go through, it should be approved, and they can start charging and doing fraudulent activity in my name. But if I have my credit report frozen, the credit report can't be pulled, so they can't make a credit decision, so it's going to be denied. So that's the difference.
Well, and that's what I feel like happens when I do the fraud alert though, is that, so let's say I went to Macy's and wanted to open up a credit card. 'cause you know, I was getting whatever percentage off. Yeah. It would turn it down. Oh. Because of the fraud. Because of the fraud alert. And then basically what they do is [00:28:00] they mail something to your house or they try to call you later, and then you can open it later.
You just can't instantaneously open the credit. It's just more of a pain. To do it. And but what you're saying is that freezing it just basically takes it off the market completely takes it takes it off. It's just this next. It's just the next step. Yeah. So I would say it's better in that sense because the if somebody has a credit, if they have a fraud alert on their credit report, I see it.
So I've pulled the credit. I see the fraud alert. We proceed. And then the underwriter before closing before actually granting credit the underwriter one of the conditions would be the underwriter has to call the number in the credit in the front on the on the credit report in the front section and confirm that it is our borrower and then they need to.
Say some things, but is it possible that somebody that the identity thief, if they had all your information and they could still do all of that. Okay. So that makes sense. Because the underwriter [00:29:00] doesn't know that they've never met the person and yeah, face to face. And so they don't know that it's yeah.
Somebody from another country or something kind of like If I have, if I have an alarm on my house, I want the alarm that doesn't even allow anybody to get inside my house. I don't want the alarm that tells me somebody's in my house. And I want, I want the alarm that just prevents it, prevents it from going.
So it's the lock. I want the lock. I want something, some lock, some, some. To keep them out completely. They don't even get, they have no access, they're not getting in at all. So I don't want to protect myself from that.
Mastering Credit Freezes: A How-To Guide
Once I have an intruder, I want to never have an intruder in the first place. So how are freezing does?
OK, so how do you freeze your credit? So the easiest way is just to Google Experian credit freeze. TransUnion credit freeze. What's the other one? Equifax credit freeze to just do all three. And you have to you have to freeze them individually. Yeah.
The Perils of Losing Your Credit Freeze Password
Now, my advice, which I think most people would would already realize this.
Do not lose your password. Cause I've had so many clients lose their password [00:30:00] cause they forget about it. Cause life goes by fast. Like this year's gone by fast. And there's three different credit reporting agencies that you're logging into. And so when I'll say, Hey, I can't access your credit report because it's frozen.
I need you to unfreeze it. They'll say, um, I can't remember where my log in, I don't, I don't remember what it is. And so, so that's imperative is make sure that when the time comes, that they need their credit, that they can easily go unfreeze it. Cause literally if they, they know they're logging a password unfreezing it, it's like instantaneous.
So it's just like the fraud alert. I mean, I can go on and I turn it on and off whenever I want it. Okay. So it's the same thing. So if I know, Hey, I'm gonna go buy a car and I want to see what the financing looks like. I'm going to unfreeze my credit report. If I say, you know what? I, today I'm going to get a rewards credit card or this week I'm going to unfreeze my credit report and then I can go freeze it again.
Now there's one little caveat that I would make people aware of because we can't just freeze it and then not pay attention anymore. We still have to pay attention for anything that doesn't prevent [00:31:00] stuff from coming into my credit report. So let's say that somebody stole my identity. and leased an apartment and then skipped out, didn't pay it, and now there's a collection in my name with an apartment complex for something I've never even signed up for.
Oh, so even though it was frozen, they could still Yes. So you would think the freezing would prevent them from being able to rent an apartment in my name and it probably would. So that probably. But if it wasn't frozen when they rented it and then you froze it after they rented it? Yes, and then they moved out.
Okay, so, so it doesn't stop fraudulent collections. So we always have to watch out for the fraudulent collections. So, so preventative measure is to just lock the credit report down so that credit can be accessed. Even if somebody has our information, that's the best method, but for anything that's still out there, well, it's, um, it's, it's still necessary to pay attention.
That makes sense.
Navigating Title Fraud and Signature Risks
I took a class a couple of weeks ago that the Arizona. It was a prosecutor. It was like the state, the state attorneys prosecute, like their [00:32:00] enforcement and whatnot. They did, they did a, a, um, a webinar about, about title fraud. And when, and I was listening to it, it's very interesting. But when you think about it here in Arizona, If somebody wanted to get our signature, it's public domain.
That's true. It's all out there. And there are, there are these rosters who are literally getting fake notary stamps. So when a notary's license expires, if they don't renew it, well, they there's some, I mean, whether they renew or they don't renew it, they're supposed to return the stamp. The stamp belongs, I believe, to the state, to the secretary of state who issues the notary license.
So you do have this issue of. Fraud can go deep. It can be, Hey, we know what this person's signature looks like based on recorded documents. We have a fake notary stamp. There's a lot of damage you can do with stuff like that. Oh my gosh. So when you think about how advanced, and it's really not that advanced, it's like literally I could teach my [00:33:00] sons in fifth grade, I could teach him how to go find documents online on the recorder's office.
Yeah, it's really easy. It's not that hard at all. No, it's not hard at all. To order up a. I don't know how hard that is, but I'm sure I'm sure it's not that difficult. And so when you think about those possibilities, then that's just scratching the surface of the ways that that identity thieves work.
The Realities of Credit Fraud and Protective Measures
If I just freeze my credit report, I probably, you I probably deter a lot of the things that happens, but I always have to pay attention.
Regardless, I have to pay attention. That's some great stuff though, to keep your credit high and to make sure that you're not having to deal with headaches. Because that's the thing is, we're busy. Nobody wants to deal with this stuff. So to take these little measures that take a little bit of time to set up and, you know, we have to pay attention.
Yeah, but doing it once a year. Doing it, but that's, you know, believe me, that's.
Personal Anecdotes on Credit Mishaps and Lessons Learned
I'll tell you a story. I, I was doing a lot of conferences, doing a lot of conferences when the book first came out. And so I [00:34:00] was, I literally, I think it was in like 30 different cities in like almost 30 days. So it was just like flight, flight, flight.
Just, so I was living at airports and I went to this, I was in Nashville, Tennessee, went to a sports bar and decided to just kind of relax. And Before I went to the next city and the the server, he was very chatty. Asks me for my business card. I'm like, well, you know, I'm not licensed in Tennessee. So I don't, you know, I don't know why you are here taking my business card.
What I learned is 48 hours later somebody charged 15, 000 on my business credit card. Bye bye. And is that the card that you had given him? That's the card I gave him. So now, because so think about when, when you go online to order something and pay with your credit card, what do you need? The account number, the expiration number, the CVV code, the three digits and a billing zip code.
So by giving him my business card, he now presumed he might have my billing and it was the [00:35:00] same. And then so, so yeah, 15, 000. Wow. And that was a card I only used. For flights, for rental cars, for hotels, and then in that instance, to, for my business, you know, business meal expense, and so that he was the only one that had ever actually held the card.
Everything else was just done online. Was done, yeah, so you knew where it was. Yeah, so, and he was the only one that knew, that would have known the billing. So did you call the place? I called, yeah, the National Police Department didn't really care. And it got, it all got reversed really, really quickly, but here's how fast they work.
So I called my bank that was the card issuer and keep in mind, I mean, I'm making the personal guarantee because I'm the business owner, but it's under my LLC's name. So it's not even on my personal credit report. So any credit card that you have in your LLC's name or corporation's name, that's probably not on your personal credit anyway, but I still want to maintain it because I want my business credit to be good.
So. So I acted as soon as [00:36:00] I saw, because what I did was when I got back home, I immediately paid everything off from that, from that round of trips, but I noticed, so it was normally like a 30, 000 credit limit. So usually as soon as I paid the full balance, it would immediately show 30, 000 available. Well, this time it didn't.
It showed like 15, 000. I'm like, well, that's weird. So I called, so even before it showed anything on my side, I called and said, Hey, this is weird. I just paid it off in full and usually it goes to 30, 000, but it just went to like, Oh, there's like a ton of outs like pending charges. Like there's a flight from Thailand to England.
They're like, they can see. I'm like, what? I'm like, no, I'm like, they're like, there's all these iTunes cards. Purchases. And so I said, no, it's all fraud. And so they, they took out as much as they could, but the whoever flew from Thailand to England, they got their flight in 'cause they couldn't stop that. Oh my gosh.
They can reverse a charge fast enough. I hopefully they got stuck in England and, and . Yeah, let's go back. [00:37:00] But see, that's it. That we have to be aware of that sort of stuff, right? That's a great story. And so here's a piece of advice. I would never use a debit card. I would never let that debit card out of my site.
I wouldn't use a debit card online. And I wouldn't use it in a restaurant either because I don't want that debit card out of my site because if I'm arguing with the credit card issuer, that's a lot better because I have a lot of federal laws on my side rather than the debit card that's coming straight out of your checking account.
Because the credit card, it's not my money. It's their money. Okay. And that's why they're so quick to cancel this and to do all the. They're the ones. So ultimately it's the merchant who feels the pain. The 15, 000, the merchant now, so they stole it. Yeah, exactly. So, so it's the merchant. Ultimately, it's not the credit card company that's actually probably not even, I mean, they're going to take some loss, but very minor.
It's the merchant who suffers. Yeah. So that, that's a, it's a big deal for small businesses. Yeah, it is a big deal for small businesses. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. I was buying Christmas gifts for my kids [00:38:00] last week and we did, um, It was a $750, just a combined gift. This is a very big birthday and Christmas gift as a disclaimer, everybody, uh, as, as a December birthday.
Yeah. We don't like combined gifts, but, but no, they say they do. This is a big gift and it's actually not. I was buying it for the grandparents , and, uh, it was $750 and, uh, it got de it got declined. I had to Oh, really? Yeah. And so then I tried American, I've tried American Express first and I didn't see the email.
And so then I was like, Oh, I'll just try another one to approve it. I'll try another one. And, uh, and so then they also, uh, rejected it and I had to go through. And so then the merchant had to go through and try to charge it again in 48 hours. That was the lowest amount that, which I thought was so great.
Smart because, you know, this is for like gaming equipment, for video games and stuff. Oh yeah. Probably way more likely to, exactly, yeah. To have more fraud. But I thought that was really [00:39:00] interesting that the, it was so low because I do buy airline tickets and things like that. Um, but yeah, even at $750, they were.
And it's also Christmas time, you know, it was Thanksgiving. So I'm sure I made a quest three. Uh, it was, how did you know? Cause my someone's one too. Okay. Hopefully this is going to go out after the, after my kids hear it. Um, so what are some ways then? Okay.
The Hidden Dangers of Co-Signing Loans
So that's the fraud piece of it. So what are some ways that people unknowingly, um, hurt their credit and they think that they're like helping because you had a story before we started about a guy that did the co signing.
So, so here's the piece of advice I would have when somebody co signs. I've seen a lot of smart people make dumb decisions when they've co signed with family members. So first of all, I would, if I was going to co sign, I would only be with a family member. Because essentially somebody comes to you and says, Hey, will you co sign with me?
They're saying, I don't qualify on my own, so I need you to help me qualify based on, you know, I need [00:40:00] you on the hook as well. And so you have to really trust this person. And so I've seen, I've had friends, you know, in the, you know, people I went to college with where They're smart, but they, they do dumb things such as, hey, I, I co signed with my stepson on a car.
He couldn't afford to make the payment. It was a five year term. We were six months into it. So I drove the car to the nearest bank branch that financed the vehicle and told them to take it back. Is that going to hurt my credit? Uh, yes, it is. Like the first of all, that's not how you do it. And, um, did you burst out laughing?
I'm sure. Like sometimes you're like, uh, that's a really bad idea anyway. Otherwise smart people doing things like that. Just because his excuse was why never even drove the car. I'm like, but you co signed on it. Yeah. You're probably more obligated than him. He might not even technically be on it. Cause that's a.
That's the thing that can happen is people think, Oh, I'm co signing on this, [00:41:00] this car. And then the other part of the person who's actually, you know, that was buying in the first place, they're not even on the note. Yeah. So that can happen. I've seen a lot of girlfriends co sign for their boyfriends and then, um, and then they break up and then they're kind of stuck with it.
And then something happens like a wreck or just. He stops making payments. It could be so many things and then it's just and then she's on the hook for making payments about a car that's not even drivable or, you know, things like that. Ooh, that brings up a good point.
Gap Insurance: A Must-Have for Car Owners
Gap insurance. Get your gap insurance through your insurance car, you know, your car insurance provider.
I wouldn't get it separately because why would you want two different insurance companies? And so I know when somebody buys a car, they're going to be offered, hey, do you want to get gap insurance through us? Here's what you need. Just go with your state pharma, progressive, or whoever you have. Say I need, I need gap insurance and, and [00:42:00] keep it all in, you know, under one umbrella.
And I say this because, and this isn't common, but. I had a client who she had a vehicle that was relatively new, but it got totaled when she got gap insurance through the dealership, the dealership never turned in the paperwork. So it was not in effect. So now she's trying to litigate with the dealership.
She still has a car payment that's due. She has a car that's not drivable because it's totaled. And of course she bought a brand new and then she's trying to prove that they didn't turn in the paperwork. So she, yeah, so it's a giant mess. So avoid that giant mess by just going with whoever you, whoever you trust with your car insurance.
Currently, you should trust them with your gap insurance. There's no reason to not to, but people, you know, you're sitting, you know, you're sitting there, you're waiting for the finance to go through whatever and people say, yeah, yeah, yeah. That sounds important. Throw it in there. Insurance should be through an insurance company and you would want it to be all under the same umbrella anyway.
So. [00:43:00] Okay. Because then even if it was done correctly, you don't want that, the fighting between the insurance companies and whatnot, it'd be, I would just, I can't imagine why you wouldn't want to under one umbrella, right? That's true. Because the higher, the higher limit you have with an insurance company, the better off that you are.
Like they're more, they're going to fight for you kind of thing. And yeah, want your, want their money back. Really? Yeah. Speaking of insurance, here's another thing just popped into my head. Let's say that a parent lets their kid borrow the car. It's the parent's car. The kid goes out, makes a poor decision, has a little too much to drink, causes an accident.
The insurance company will cover the accident, but in the fine print, if there's, I don't know if it's criminal damage or neglect, or it's the fact that somebody was inebriated, whatever the case may be, whatever the actual verbiage in their policy is, if somebody causes an accident while they're intoxicated, The insurance, the policy holder can [00:44:00] be sued for the payout.
So I saw one, I saw something on a credit report, it was a 50, 000 judgment from one of the big insurance companies, and I said, okay, what's going on here? They're like, in this case, it was actually, she had let her brother borrow her car. He had an accident, he was drinking, had an accident. So they covered the accident, covered all the damage.
So they paid the other party, but then they came after her. But then she had to pay 50, 000 out of her pocket because she let somebody else, you know, not her brother. What if her brother had been, um, insured on, been on the insurance as another driver, they, they probably, well, that wouldn't have mattered.
Cause it could have been, it could have been her. It was because of the drunk driving. Yeah. So, so you had to be really cautious about stuff like that. So, you know, in the blink of an eye. She's nice and does a favor for her brother, he does her a horrible act by drinking and driving in her vehicle, causes an accident, now she's being sued for 50, 000.
Right, and then it's on her credit. It's on her credit. And now her credit score is [00:45:00] going down. She's paying 50 a month for the next 2 decades. For the rest of her life. And so, so people don't think about these split second decisions that can cause a lot of financial harm. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Okay. So those are the ways.
So most of the time that you see that people unknowingly hurt their credit, it's by like closing credit cards that are really old and then co signing on like mostly cars. Is it mostly cars? If you're going to co sign, just make sure you're in a position to make that payment. Of whatever it is. Yeah. Like you need to go into it.
Saying, you know what? I may be making this payment at some point in time and be prepared for that. Make that your rationale for saying, I, I can afford this. I can, I can make this payment. And, and does that happen with houses too? Yeah. I mean, most of the time I feel like people are co-signing for cars, but Oh, I see it on houses all the time.
Houses all the time. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, because as soon as I tell somebody, Hey, qualify for 250,000, but if you can get a non occupant, co-signer, you can qualify, you [00:46:00] know, for what you want. And so. It's, I'm sure you've heard of the book, The Millionaire Next Door, and they talk about social welfare, social welfare is very much alive where mom and dad are still, I absolutely agree with that, giving out the money and, and, uh, yeah, just remember that when you're comparing yourself to other people, don't, it is very true, don't compare yourself to other people because the person who's driving around in the fancy car, Might be living in an apartment.
The person who's living in a big house might drive the worst car you've ever seen, but they have a sweet house and it might be empty. And yeah, I just never know. I know. And so sometimes it's not uncommon. Like I'll pull a credit report and people have like 120, 000 in credit card debt. Like, so literally if you have a husband and wife, they're each making six figures.
So let's say the brain at least 200, 000 as a household, they probably shouldn't have 120, 000 in credit card debt. It's not uncommon. Mm-Hmm. . And, and so, because to them they can just pay it. They're, I can make them [00:47:00] monthly payment, get a bonus, I get a, I'll get a bonus. At some point I'll pay. Yeah. But then they don't like something else comes up.
And, and so living outside of their means is, you know, I see that a lot where it's just, it's kind of sad. Yeah. It's like, so, but that's, that's the world that we've always lived in. I mean, it's not just, yeah. It just is what it is. It's been that way. I've been that way for 22 years, since I've been in the.
Yeah, absolutely. So just, yeah, don't compare yourself to others because you don't know the, what the parents are doing. I see, I see the, I see the underbelly of this and believe me, there are a lot of people out there that wouldn't have what they have if it weren't for their wealthy parents or their wealthy grandparents.
Yes. Wealthy parents and wealthy grandparents are constantly giving their adult children money. There are. There are. There are 40 and 50 year olds who are still getting allowances. Not kidding. Yeah, I agree. 'cause I have to know where all, all large deposits come from. Anything. A large deposit for free, name me and Freddie Mac, is anything that's 50% or greater than [00:48:00] 50% of their gross monthly income.
So if the gross monthly income is 12,000 and they have a deposit of 6,001. I would have to know where that money came from. Now, if it's payroll, that, you know, it's, it's easily, you can see what it is right there in the bank statement. But otherwise, I need an explanation. I need a paper trail. And so, it's not uncommon, oh, my mom gave me that.
My mom gives me an allowance. So ? Yeah. Or just gives me money every year 'cause they don't need it or something like that. Yeah. I'd say a lot of people do capitalize, you know, they'll, they'll capitalize on the, the, you know, how much can I gift tax free? You know, so that, that does happen. Okay. But, but yeah, you just, you just don't know what somebody's situation.
Right. No, you don't And you shouldn't compare. Yeah. Just don't, because you live in same neighborhood or even. Even just because you work for the same company in the same position, you just don't know. Yeah, you don't. It really depends on like how much they're paying. Yeah. What their family situation is.
And this is why people do talk about generational wealth and how it does help people and you know, all that, but that's why we're not talking about, but yeah, it's just, you [00:49:00] know, a lot of co signing on mortgages and same idea. I need to be prepared that, Hey, I would be able to pay this mortgage until we could sell the property.
If this person I'm co signing with. Lost their job or, yeah, I'm prepared to take this over. Yeah. So kind of thing. Okay. Something that happened recently, I had, okay. So I assume that the vast majority of the population is intelligent, but sometimes people do really unintelligent things. So I was asking what happened with this one account because they just stopped paying it.
They're like, well, it was a car loan, and they all of a sudden they sold it to another lender and we had to make payments to them. And we said, you're not who we borrowed the money from, so we're not going to pay you. I said, seriously, like you decided to not make the car payment because it was a different bank?
They're like, yeah, because that's not who we borrowed the money from. Like, okay. Like if you read, if you read the note, they [00:50:00] can assume that, and you know, any, they can be assigned to another, you know, it can be assigned to another, uh, lender, any servicer. And so, so being smart about things. And if somebody is not sure, then.
Call somebody else and ask. Yeah, and call the 800 number and make sure and get some proof or whatever. Go to consumerfinance. com and say, Hey, my, my car loan company, now I have to make my payment to another company. Can they do that? And they'll say, yes, they can. And then so, so just rational decisions.
Sometimes I see people make just. Just totally, just really rash. Yeah. Like I just don't feel like doing that or piss me off. Seriously. That's why, that's why you have a 90 day lane in a car repossession. Mm-Hmm. Like, are you serious? So, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Not common. Not common. But that one happened recently.
Okay. I'm still stunned, as you can tell. Yeah. . I get it. I get it. There are certain things. Yeah, there's certain things that I'm like, what? I don't know how that happened. So you, so you've brought up consumerfinance. gov quite a few times. So you really like that website. And I like it because it's a, it's [00:51:00] very efficient tool.
It doesn't cost any money. And I feel like people don't know about it. People don't seem to know, but it came about in 2016 when the Dodd Frank Act. And it was maybe a little bit before then because of the Frank act started coming out like 2012 and it was released in sections up until 2016. But the Dodd Frank act establish establish the consumer financial protection Bureau which was this new agency that I took over the to do what the FTC wasn't doing.
The FTC was going after big, bad players. Like it had to be a massive fraud for the FTC to get involved. And then this is to help the normal person. This is to help just the average person down the street. And see, so, and they've done a good job. I love that. That's good. And that's good to hear. Okay. Well, wonderful.
Well, thank you so much for all this good information is, are we missing anything that you feel like we should go back to the co signing? Okay.
Understanding the Impact of Your Credit on Business and Employment
I want to talk about the CEO of pharmaceutical company. Okay. Oh, this is a story you were telling me about. Okay. Before he, alright, so he's making plenty of money.
He started this company, he's got 500 [00:52:00] employees, everything's going great. So his brother-in-Law says, Hey, you know, you got all the money, uh, I got the brains. Let's invest in real estate. And he says, okay. Well, long story short, the brother-in-law was not making the mortgage payments on time. So the CEO.
He's on these mortgages. Well, he's not paying attention to stuff. He's a CEO of a big company. He's busy Well, they go to get a corporate line of credit another one and they get denied because the CEO has a 601 FICO score Because of these mortgage lates. Wow. The board of directors, so they're doing research to come up with new drugs.
The board of directors was going to oust him and they said, you know, we can't have this impediment because we need this money. And so, we'll make you, put you in a different position, but you can't, you know, we can't be applying for Yeah, that brings up, yeah, that brings up an important point. Like, if you own a company, I mean, your credit is very, very important.
So, yeah. People can say, well, I'm not going to be buying a house. I'm not going to be buying a car. I'm not going to be doing this. But if you're a [00:53:00] business owner, yeah, business and, you know, even just like one thing I learned when I was teaching at Ohio State, these students were being denied internships because of collections on their credit report.
It's part of the background check, not in every absolute position, but it definitely, uh, when it comes to pharmaceutical, that was, that was a big one. And in finance too. I mean, I would lose my license if I filed for bankruptcy or something like that. Yeah, there's a lot of my, I have to have my credit pulled in, you know, for my NMLS licensing.
And, and so it's like, and again, so credit is opportunity. It really is just something. And I view it kind of like education or like, yeah, keeping your credit clean. It just makes your life easier. Like if you just, you know, have these things just checked off, it makes your life easier and it opens up all these other opportunities that you're not going to have these hurdles.
So yeah, one last thing I would point out about that, So he called me to the past client. He said, Hey, what, what do I do? You're the guy, you know, what do I do? I said, okay, there's, it was late. It was legitimately late. All you can do is ask for a favor at this point. So be really nice and say, Hey, is there any way you [00:54:00] can remove this?
I'm the CEO of such and such company. If I need to open our business checking and savings there to make this happen, put me in touch with a VP. And ultimately because he was rich and had and powerful. He was able to get that off of his credit because he could open up his checking and everything there because something like that can be removed from the credit report at the sole discretion of the creditor under the Uniform Credit Classification Management Policy Manual.
That, you know, if you need to go to sleep at night, get some Zombie, but, but it's, they can do that. They can remove it at their sole discretion. They just choose not to because the Credit Data Industry Association tells them not to if it's legitimate, but favors can be done. Okay. All right. Well, thank you for that story.
Concluding Advice and Resources for Credit Management
Thank you for all the stories and thank you for being on. That's Patrick Ritchie and his book is called The Credit Roadmap. If you're interested, he does say it's a little bit out of date. A little out of date, but, uh, revision. He has a lot, a lot of great [00:55:00] information. And, uh, let me know if you have any other questions.
I'd be happy to pass it on and all of Patrick's information will be in the show notes. And thank you so much for listening. Be sure to leave a review and subscribe and tell your friends. I hope this, uh, helped clear up any confusion and just made your, I don't know, your financial world feel more free. So thank you so much for listening.
Disclaimer: The information provided in this podcast is for general informational purposes only and should not be construed as professional financial advice. Always consult with a qualified financial advisor or professional before making any financial decisions. The hosts and guests of this podcast are not responsible for any actions taken based on the information presented.