Your score An insider's secrets to understanding, controlling, and protecting your credit score

Anthony Davenport

Book - 2018

Presents a road map for how to navigate the confusing, secretive world of consumer credit, and how to upgrade and correct one's credit score.

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Subjects
Published
Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt [2018]
Language
English
Main Author
Anthony Davenport (author)
Other Authors
Matthew Rudy (author)
Physical Description
xvi, 202 pages ; 22 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 191-194) and index.
ISBN
9781328695277
  • Introduction: A Cautionary Tale
  • 1. What You Don't Know Can Hurt You
  • 2. What's in Your Score?
  • 3. Building the Perfect Credit Profile
  • 4. Gaming the System
  • 5. The Five Biggest Credit Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
  • 6. Preparing Your Credit Score for a New Home Purchase
  • 7. The Care and Feeding of Credit Cards
  • 8. Protecting Your Credit Score from Identity Theft
  • 9. The "Newbie": Establishing Credit for the First Time
  • 10. Higher Education: Navigating the School Loan Landscape
  • 11. Disaster Relief: Surviving Divorce, Foreclosure, and Bankruptcy
  • Acknowledgments
  • Appendix
  • Notes
  • Index
Review by Booklist Review

Davenport, founder and CEO of Regal Financial, and coauthor Rudy write thorough advice for general readers on avoiding the pitfalls of bad credit by explaining how the credit score system works. Davenport discusses what goes into a credit score as well as how to improve one, develop a perfect credit profile, and more. From signing up for credit cards to managing home purchases, Davenport covers a lot of ground while providing suggestions for those who are completely new to personal finance. Davenport also explores how consumers can deal with fraud alerts or identity theft and how these incidents can affect one's credit score. Readers will feel like Davenport is sitting right next to them, deciphering the current credit score system, walking through the steps to avoid credit mistakes, and laying out strategies for credit success. Davenport recommends different action plans for one to take on managing their credit scores. All readers who seek to better their knowledge of financial literacy, personal finance, and banking will find this a valuable resource.--Pun, Raymond Copyright 2017 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Former mortgage lender Davenport offers a handy, one-stop guide to understanding-and fixing-your credit score. Outraged at practices he found predatory and nontransparent, Davenport left the industry to instead provide credit-management services. He brings both sides of his expertise to answering common credit-related questions. Credit is undeniably big business, and in Davenport's eyes, it's also a creepy one, wherein credit bureaus and consumers have an inherently adversarial and imbalanced relationship; credit bureaus, he posits, want customers to think their scores are complicated, but anyone can learn how they work. His offering is a step-by-step manual to understanding your "real" financial score, not the estimate provided by free annual reports. He guides readers through identifying and fixing common mistakes, making sense of the report itself, and building a strong credit profile. Readers can skip to the sections pertaining most to their needs, such as discussions of home purchases, credit-card management, identity theft, establishing credit, school loans, and surviving disasters such as foreclosure and divorce. Davenport has written a clearheaded, must-read guide for anyone looking to decode the most influential number of them all. Agent: Farley Chase, Chase Literary Agency. (Jan. 2018) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

"Almost nobody understands how the world of consumer credit really works," writes Davenport (founder, CEO, Regal Financial), with coauthor Rudy in this how-to guide, which seeks to "demystify the entire consumer credit business." Davenport, who now runs his own credit management firm with many high-profile clients, was formerly a mortgage lender and loan originator for what he calls the "other side"-the enormous Bank of America and Wells Fargo. This adversarial tone toward the credit industry persists throughout the book, and Davenport's advocacy is strongest when he offers practical tips rather than heated bluster. Highlights include laying out the relevant credit score factors, providing an action plan for fixing the five biggest credit mistakes, details on preventing identity theft, and a fascinating, highly detailed set of step-by-step instructions for correcting an error with the three credit bureaus. VERDICT Despite the occasional repetition, this book offers useful points for any person seeking to improve or gain control of their credit score.-Doug -Diesenhaus, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

1: What You Don't Know Can Hurt You   Getting ready to buy a home for the first time is one of the most stressful things you do in your financial lifetime. If you're like most people, you probably don't know much about the process, so you go into it hoping you're getting some good and reliable guidance from your Realtor and from the mortgage person your Realtor swears "will take good care of you." So you go to the bank and sit across the desk from somebody you've never met before and fill out a form that asks for your Social Security number, job history, bank account information, and annual income. You do what you are told and wait to see if you qualify for a loan. The mortgage originator punches a few keys, scans the screen, and then announces you qualify for such-and-such a loan, at this interest rate, and you have a down payment requirement. You walk out of the office feeling a mixture of excitement and fear. You can see the path to your new home, but you probably have no idea what you're signing yourself up for ​-- ​except for thirty years of payments that are bigger than almost any single check you've ever written. For most, this is a nerve-wracking experience. And it would be nice to feel that all of the people involved in that transaction are on your side and are working to get you the best deal possible. But the hard truth is that the entire consumer credit business ​-- ​from the bureaus that keep track of your credit history, to the credit card companies, auto lenders, and mortgage originators that are in position to give you money, to the credit counseling services that advertise themselves as the solution to your debt problems ​-- ​are all lined up with one single goal in mind. They're there to make money. Your money. Those companies are looking to make a profit on everything from the money you borrow to the information you submit just to get the loan process started. And as for that mortgage originator? Regardless of whether or not you actually apply for a loan there or even get approved, they are sending all of your personal data along to an aggregator that then sells it on to other companies that will then advertise their services to you. In other words, from the very first time you filled out your first application for a student loan or $500-limit credit card, your financial life has been monitored, inspected, and sliced and diced by hundreds of different companies. They're evaluating you on your performance, predicting your financial future, and figuring out how to sell you more stuff. But that isn't all. All the data that those companies are compiling gets crunched into a set of three numbers that make up your credit score. That score is being used by insurance companies, potential employers, landlords ​-- ​even potential spouses ​-- ​to see where you stand and how you measure up financially. Most people have no idea who has eyes on their financial life, how things like credit scores are calculated, and specifically what kinds of bad things can happen when they don't pay their bills on time. It's sort of like walking into a casino and playing a table game where there are no rules listed and nobody is there to explain what to do. You're just putting your money down and hoping nobody rips you off too badly. Even if you're one of the few people who understands a little bit about how the world of consumer credit works and is aware of what credit scores are and how they work, you're still probably not getting the real information that lenders and other companies are using to judge you. Most of the free credit reports you receive online or through a special offer from your credit card company are just weak estimates of your true credit scores ​-- ​and can be off by as much as 50 points. And 50 points is the difference between qualifying for the best rate you can get on a mortgage or being stuck with a subprime loan that costs you tens of thousands more dollars. Let's say you're one of the very few who knows the full picture of their financial life, and you're doing a great job keeping track of your credit and protecting yourself and your personal information. In fact, you can have totally perfect data security within your home and your computer, but it just takes one careless merchant that doesn't invest in robust digital security to accidentally leave an open door for a hacker to take your Social Security number, account number, address, and all the other personal information they need to rip you off. I'm not trying to frighten you, but there's plenty that should make you concerned about what's happening out there without your knowledge. According to the terrific documentary film Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit, and the Era of Predatory Lenders , 90 percent of all credit reports provided by U.S. credit bureaus have inaccurate information in them. And the fastest growing problem affecting the security of your credit report isn't a criminal stealing your identity. It's your file being accidentally merged with somebody else's and having your credit scores hurt by information that doesn't have anything to do with you. You would think that the credit bureaus ​-- ​organizations whose goal is to collect comprehensive financial information on as many people as possible so that creditors can predict risk ​-- ​would want to have the right and correct information assigned to the right and correct person. But there's no incentive for them to fix anything, ever. Why? Because in the vast majority of cases, the mistakes on a person's credit report are causing their credit to be judged more negatively, not more positively. And customers with lower credit scores end up getting charged more interest, which can be more profitable for lenders. It's not just me saying it. In 2011, the three main credit bureaus, Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax, settled a class action lawsuit for $45 million brought by almost a million plaintiffs. In the suit, the consumers charged the credit bureaus with failing to accurately report the discharging of debts and for failing to investigate when consumers disputed a record on their reports. In addition to paying the lawsuit settlement, the bureaus were also required to go back and correct the records of more than one million consumers who had filed for bankruptcy going all the way back to 2003. In another case, an Oregon woman won an $18.6 million lawsuit against Equifax in 2013 after spending years trying to correct mistakes on her credit report that appeared when her file was merged with one for another person. She was denied by a variety of lenders based on the inaccurate information that she had tried to remove on eight separate occasions over three years. And in 2015, Equifax settled a lawsuit filed by eight consumers who complained that the credit bureau misrepresented the source of public record information that it was placing on its credit reports. If you read your credit report from Equifax and it showed a tax lien, bankruptcy, or other court-related judgment, Equifax reported the source of that material as the specific court where those judgments occurred. But Equifax wasn't getting that information itself directly from the courts. It was aggregating it from other sources, like a website that publishes links to stories from other media. The lawsuit claimed that Equifax didn't verify the information to make sure it was up-to-date and free of errors. Just how powerful is this information vacuum? The Consumer Federation of America did a survey in 2016 that found that 32 percent of American consumers had never accessed their credit report, and another 44 percent hadn't requested a report in the last year. And the reports referred to in that survey were the ones that summarize the last two years of your credit history ​-- ​not the comprehensive, real reports you need to have to get a complete picture of where you stand. The time has come to demystify the entire consumer credit business so you can see exactly what kind of information is being tracked, how it's being used, and how you can control it to best serve your interests, not just your creditors'. It all starts with your score. Excerpted from Your Score: An Insider's Secrets to Understanding, Controlling, and Protecting Your Credit Score by Anthony Davenport All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.