Take Control of your Credit Score with Alisa Glutz

If you live in the United States, this is a must listen episode for you. Hey, everybody, this is Sharon Trivata and every single one of us that lives in the United States is bound by a magical number that we call our credit score. And no one really has broken down for us what it means. Whether you're applying for a job or a leasing your new BMW or trying to get a new credit card or renting that beach house or even applying for a mortgage, every single time they're going to check your credit score. And in today's episode, I speak with Alyssa Glutz and she wrote the book on how to optimize your credit score with ease. She talks about how to take control of your score is the score based on a magical algorithm. What you need to know about the three bureaus should you pay off your credit cards every month or should you not should you cut up your credit cards and cancel them. Don't do that. How to get a late charge off your credit report and the exact script for that and sometimes even why your credit score can drop even if you have done everything right and the secret of how to avoid that. This is a super fun and very practical episode almost something that you must listen to to get ready to learn what nobody ever took the time to teach us about your credit score. One thing is for certain just because it's tried and true doesn't mean it's working right now. So the big question is this where can you learn what is working right now? The strategies, the tactics, the psychology and the exact how to how to grow your business. How to blow up your personal brand and supercharge your personal growth. That is the question and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Sharon Tribata and welcome to Business School. So let's say how did this whole fascination with credit dart for you? You know because you know I bet you look at me and go what? Like why would credit? You know what I mean? Exactly. We're not a credit person. I think that I've always had a real heart for helping the underdog. I've been five, nine since I think I was born. So there's something in you that takes the lead a lot. I was always kind of the mama hen and in high school, my 12 little girl friends that were little, you know, but all looked at me like what are we doing this week and all that? So I think I've always kind of taken the lead in subjects that I know help that help the masses. I guess you could say. Yeah. So I've been in mortgage lending since '03 and at the time I didn't even realize this but '03 was the first year we could all see our credit report for the first time. But it was a fascination like from the beginning with me because I knew it was a game changer. It was something that where if someone's score was there, then they could move forward by a house, you know, and do things. That was pretty much it. But in '03, you didn't, that wasn't a pain for anybody because we all had a pulse, we all got a house. It was just like they were giving them out of doctions, you know, like get a water bottle, get a house. And so we all got houses. And so it wasn't really that impactful, but then when we crashed, when everybody crashed, I just, I've always been such a positive like empowering kind of mentality person, you know, person naturally anyway. But that was my time when I felt like, you know what, we're going to come out of the cave. We're going to come out of the claws that, you know, once we quit hiding from these collections and servers, you know, that are coming after us from the crash, that eventually people would emerge. And then they would have no idea what to do next. And I knew the only way our housing industry will ever come back is if people know how to come back. But I'm 42 and I never got taught how to come back. You know, at our age at a three, I mean, we were just all coming out of college and nobody really taught me like sat me down. And I knew, then I pretty soon knew that everybody, everybody I knew was the same boat. And there was actually a lot of shame about it. Yeah, but did you want to shame about it? Especially to not being able to say I've told my credit. Did you have to, you understood credit from, you know, being a lender and how it impacted someone, whether they could make a purchase or how their application was? But did you have to like stop and say, well, I need to going and learning something to go then teach it to someone else is a completely different learning, right? You have to know it this early, like you have to know it in your nervous system. I know you do. And I'll tell you what, pain will do that. Not only the pain of me going through a divorce, but going through the crash myself and everything. But in 2012, I in the middle of the night at two in the morning, I found a Ramsey in the middle of the night. Like everybody else, you know, he had just come out with his book in 2012, which was pretty monumental because if you think about it, he published his whole financial piece university Extreme Money Makeover in 2012, which was the same year when we saw the entire adjustment change. So how that credit score really impacted your budget finances and everything overnight. It went from a six, 80 being the top to seven to 800 is where you need to be to really save, you know, not pay as much as everybody else, right? But the lowest interest rate. But the same year came out. But in the middle of the night, I was reading and I thought, boy, that's a huge opportunity because he's like endorsing some real estate agents in different states that have gone through his financial piece. And there's only two for Arizona, what an opportunity for some agents. And I thought, you know what, real estate agents could probably learn this stuff. And if I could on a personal note, like teach them this stuff personally, I would really probably make some huge connections with agents on a personal level to where they wouldn't fire me if I didn't get the docs to title. You know, I mean, it wouldn't be like that. It would be a different, more impactful relationship. So I decided to put on a class and I put 20 agents signed up a hundred bucks. Yeah. Yeah, be in front of me to be with me for nine weeks. Wait, this is so this, hold on. Normally somebody would say, Hey, I want to get in front of agents and I would. I'll pay you. Yeah, I'll pay you. But you, you, you did it right from the beginning. You're like, Hey, if you don't pay, you don't pay attention, right? So you got to be invested. Yeah, you got to be here. I got to have you here every single week with me. And all I had to do was flip on the TV for Dave and go, you're real, you know, and so about nine weeks and you know, I'm watching it. I'm like, Wait, what's he saying about credit scores? Like is he saying cut up the credit cards and not to go off on a thing here, but my mom, my mother and a lot of the time was just going through gastric bypass. And I remember at the moment going with her doctor to, and I said, So she'll never gain the way back. You're going to, you're going to cut it. It's gone. She'll never gain it back. I'm like, Yeah, but like are you teaching her how to eat again or do things differently? Because the patterns letter up to that, what's going to change? And they were like, No, no, she won't get away. And sure enough, year later, she had gained it back. And I watched and I went, maybe it's that we don't cut the credit cards that maybe we learn how to use them, learn how to put them in our life, make them work for us. We become CEO of our money, Dave. They don't have to be dead. So I started kind of trying to, my motivation was to prove that Dave wrong in a way I love Dave Ramsey, but I thought, Hey, wait a second. This isn't for everybody. What if you don't have a hundred thousand billion, you know, to put down and, you know, now somebody with no credit scores can get a mortgage, but they're going to pay for that mortgage like they had a six 20 credit score. So why wouldn't you just do something to where you could still maintain a great credit score, but not have to go into debt? Yeah. And so I started really exploring the, using the tools I have as a loan officer started using the simulator. And I really started mentally going, wait a second. If the, if the, if how much somebody is going to pay if some, if this person comes into me and they're going to buy a house and they have a six 70 credit score, but if they had a seven 40 credit score, that same $250,000 house would be $400 less a month. Amazing, right? I'm like 400. So they're telling me they can't qualify for anything because of their debt ratio. But if I could improve their score, now they don't qualify for 250, they qualify for 335, same payment. And I started using it as a megyver tool. Yeah. I started going because they changed the way loan officers got compensated after 2012 as well. They said, you don't get paid like charge points, charge origination, get some paid on the rates, get some, we don't get paid like that anymore. It was just kind of a, you're going to get a flat fee based on the loan amount. Right. And I thought, well, then, so if I'm not going to lose anything by teaching them how to improve their credit and I can manufacture my own buyers, my own borrowers from anybody, anybody, 400, 300 bike go. But I put the right things in place and I get them there. They're my buyer and they're my buyer for life. So I got a significant impact going on. Let's talk about. I'm going to keep going with that. Yeah. So this is, so, so I have, like I wrote down so many questions for you, right? And so, interesting human beings, we get really like, I see it happen every day. I just want to say like people get very like, wait, what? Yeah. And then they start reading and they get their credit print and they're like, wait, I've got questions. I'm like, I know I do 100 tick talks a day about. Well, let's let's talk about this first. So, so is this really a computer generated number? It is. It's based on a recipe, just like if you were going to make a cake. Right. Yeah. And I called the answer, we're going to make cake. You have a bowl of nuts right now, nothing but nuts. And you're trying to get rid of all the nuts in the bowl to make a great cake and it's never going to make that cake. So we got to get flour in the bowl. Yeah. some flour in the bowl, like a credit card, you're going to charge 20 bucks a month and pay it off every month, you're going to know the day they're going to report your balance every month. You know that and then you're going to have another installment loan which is just a savings account I'm going to direct you to the actually reports to the three credit bureaus that you saved every month. You don't have to go in debt, you know, to have a good credit score. That's how it's going to come, you know. But this is amazing though, right? I think that what gives me a lot of confidence, just as a consumer, one, and I think pre-show I told you, like I've never even, it's been years since I've, I couldn't even guess the ballpark or where it is. Yeah. But more importantly, I like anything knowing if there's a, if it's an algorithm, of sorts, if there's a recipe, if there's a formula for it, I know that if I did certain things, it gives me confidence that I can get to where I want to go, which I think is a super powerful safety thing for people, right? It is. It's been taught to us that it's so confusing. It's so complicated. Doctors can't figure that out. Do you know what that's done to my head? I am queen of the world. I'm honestly, every time I read a newspaper where they're like, it's so complicated. People with PhDs don't understand. No, no, it's really like one, two, three. Yeah. Let's talk about it. So first, my question was, is there do we as consumers have certain rights when it comes to the report like how often can we pull it? What can we see? What can we get? Like, what are the rights that we have? So you don't have a right. I used to data guy that you used to get mad at in the car and say, you know what? It's not even right for the government. They should, they should, they should have to change our credit score. I mean, what would the government's not even involved? Not even involved, you know, like in that sense, there's certain laws that protect us in the sense of what can be reported on credit. It has to be accurate. The three credit bureaus have to, they have to abide to law, you know, to they have the consumer protection bureau that finance protection bureau that's basically nothing more than, you know, big brother. I mean, I've heard even from collection companies that have said, it's the presence of knowing they're there that makes us want to do things more accountable. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. So I lost my turn of thought because that's the end of the end. No, no, so those are the rights of the rights of the rights. Right. So we as a country, we get access to all three of our credit reports once a year for free, the reports, different than credit scores, okay? Reports. We can go right to annual credit report dot com. It's the only government site you can go to and per fair credit reporting act. It's it's your your right to be able to access your reports. They don't just get mailed to you. Right. You have to go in there and access them and press them like right there because but now what they've done with COVID is they've changed it for the first time in history to free weekly. So the big key thing is is that is such a massive thing that people don't realize you get access to your information being said about you. I'm very vain. Maybe that's why I like credit because I'm like I want to know what people are saying about me and how it's affecting my financial legacy. Okay, right now. Totally. I think more people should want to be interested in that. But once you start diving in and going through your three credit reports, you know, side by side and really looking at the information, if there's inaccurate information being reported, it's your right to dispute the information and the credit bureaus all have a timeframe. It's 30 days typically that they have to reach out to that creditor to confirm the information. Now it is all digital. It's not people talking like, do you think they need to pay it? I don't know. It's digital. So sometimes a number gets missed or something. There's errors. Right. And then within 30 days, the credit bureau have to respond to you by either saying, sorry, we know, we got the information and it's continuing or it's deleted now if they couldn't verify the information. Now sometimes they'll say they verify it and we already know they don't. So what the next step is that credit repair typically teaches you is to like write what's called a section 609 letter and that asks the bureaus to actually prove show me validation verification of the debt. They verified for me. That's when they usually can get it deleted on that second round of letters. But all of that stuff though is not going to matter. The whole thing I hate about credit repair is they're looking at your whole credit report seven to 10 years of information and they're charging you based on what they see. When I color your report, we black out 90% of it to get to two pages. And my two pages that you're going to have, this is the action for the red accounts. These are the, you know, action for the yellow accounts because we color in a certain color. And you're really doing it all yourself. If anything, people pay me for guidance or for coaching. But really, this is me teaching you how to do it yourself and not have to rely on anyone else. Yeah, so let's talk about that. So on the, I don't think anybody knows how these three bureaus work. Right. So at a very high level, why do these three exist and is there something that the average consumer needs to know about these three? Yeah. The most important thing is that there are three, you know, there are three companies that are not government, even though they say bureau, they're not government entities. These are private companies. Okay. They, they're main thing. They're very, very, um, uh, lucrative businesses. Okay. These three companies have people, the creditors report the information to on you. And so then, you know, they're the ones that are holding on to this information, but that information is being collected to for, for Trans Union Equifax experience to then turn around and market it to companies that want to market to you. Or so if they want some, you know, they want a, a list of people that have a fight go between six 20 and 600, Freedom, Dead Relief can call and buy all those ends call and say, how you do in? Do you need some debt relief? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so they're usually all that personal information. And I've always questioned that like, who cares if I'm on TikTok and they still my information. I don't have anything really sad, you know, like big to steal. You know, I put it all out there. And then you start thinking about like, what could they steal? It's, it's behavior. It's literally like that. It's almost the monitoring of your behavior that, that's the part that creeps me out because then it's like all of a sudden, you're talking about, who's one day. And next thing you know, Facebook's just, yeah, yeah, fools, fools, you know, and so that's it. The three credit bureaus are very separate. They don't talk to each other. The only time you can call one bureau and do something where it acts on all three is doing like a 90 day fraud alert. Yeah. One bureau and it pushes it to all three. But otherwise, if you want a freeze credit, you've got a college one. If you have something showing on trends on a credit karma, yeah, you have to get very specific with your eyes. Is it the trans union account that they're showing or is it the aquapax? And don't just look at the score. You need to look into the full report. And you need to look at the details. If all you do is look at credit karma and you look at just the trans union and aquapax vantage scores they offer, you're never looking at an experience. When you go in to get a mortgage, we pull all three of the credit reports and all of the information merges together. So, but it's only on one report. It's going to show on a try merged credit report for a mortgage. You have to focus. They're all this is big. This is Burger King in and out McDonald's. If you go to ask for a cheeseburger, they might even be able to be using the same ingredients. Okay. But it's going to taste very different. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so, so is there a, so I need to, as a consumer, we need to look at all three and kind of keep our eyes on all three. Yep. And so it's not just getting one doesn't give us a full picture, right? And not looking at one score, you know, you have over 50 scores. You could go right now to my fightgo.com and buy 28 of them for $60 and it gives you 28 of your different scores. So if you go to buy a car, there everything is an industry specific score anymore. So someone says to me, I have an 800, you know, it depends on what score they're talking about because the bank card scores, they go up to 950. So 800, you're not that great. I know you think you're great, you know, I'm just kidding. But every time I get it, well, I have an 820, how do I make it better? And you're just like, Shut up. Yeah. I didn't want to date you. Oh, that's how it starts now. Yeah. I could get it. I'm like, hi. That is the truth. You got to know the range. I mean, at first credit karma's vantage score, when it first vantage score is a credit score that competes with FICO. FICO's been the industry standard. FICO's like a machine. Like if you were a math class in high school and you used to stick the computerized test that you put in, you know, the bubble, yeah, pencil on the C, C, C, C, remember that? Yeah. He was always the right other. Of course, right? And then you slipped in the machine right before you walked out of the class and it said, boom, boom, pass or fail. Yeah. Imagine the three credit bureaus walk over to a machine. And they say, I need a FICO. I need I need the FICO 8 version. Right. And they're going to get an experience version of FICO 8. They have three single, singleized models for FICO. Guided. Gantage has one model, a tri merged model that's applied to each bureau. Anyway, that's going to bore the shit out of you. I'm not going to say this is good. So let's let's talk about this. So I I wrote on a bunch of so my audience shared a bunch of questions when I told them that I was chatting with you. So I got a I got a bunch of rapid fire questions for you because I think this can get exciting, right? So So if I don't know anything about anything and I'm gonna go pull my X-core at annualquitareport.com, I don't even know. And no scores. Oh, just a report. - No scores there. Yeah. - What is the paper that me that they'll try to get you to buy 'em? - So if I pull the report, like what is the one or two things that I should be looking for? Like what's the first thing that I should look for? - Focus on dates. So you're gonna be looking at these different accounts that have reported information on you. Keep your eyes focused on the date. The date, they'll say date opened, date updated, date reported, date of last activity. The dates are what you're looking at. Your credit scores are mostly impacted by the last 24 months of information reporting. Once you get past 24 months, let's say you had a collection on there, it hasn't updated since 2016, okay? But it's on there. It parks for seven years. You pick it up and you just start going at it. You start calling these people. Two ways, one, you'll call 'em and try to get them, pay an old debt because that's what you think you gotta do. You'll end up for a collection. If they update that balance to zero, it's gonna update the date of last activity, the date reported. It brings it back into the last 24 months of your life and drops your score. If you get it deleted, it will probably, if it's within the last 24 months, it will probably help your score, but if it's over 24 months ago, and you pay it and even if they get it deleted, if it's the oldest account, you've had opened on your credit, it will drop your score because even though you paid the collection, because it will be the oldest account opened, you move into a different category where you're compared to different people in there. So your score is a really change and it won't be positive. - Yeah, super interesting. So let's ask this one, everyone asks this, well, should I close credit cards? - No. - So you wanna do that very strategically. You always wanna, the ideal formula is to have two, of your two credit cards that you've had opened the longest, that you have that set up, that you find out the day they report your balance each month, it's one day of the month, you gotta find out what day they're going off of. - How do we find that? - So you know what day, if you know it's the 18th, is the day they go off of every month of what you owe, you might change the day you pay it to the 15th, instead of paying it on the 20th now, because if you go pay it off on the 20th, they're gonna update and they're gonna say, you owed 900 out of 1000, and you're using 90% of that available credit card and your credit score will drop. One of the biggest things that your credit score is gonna be impacted by is the choice you had monthly on credit cards. So if you don't have a credit card at all, you're missing a huge piece. If you do have a credit card, you have to know that day they're going to report your balance, like what day they're going to grade you of the month, and it's not the day you pay it. - So how would I find out when they. - How would I find out when they. - On your credit reports. - On annual credit report, if you look in the date, they'll say date last reported, and it'll say August 11th, and you'll go 11th, right or it's around the 11th of the month. Now you can call the credit card companies and ask them, but remember, they're talking statement closing date, billing cycle date, they're talking due date. - Yeah, that's the stuff you'll see on your mortgage statement. - Right. - They don't really want to tell you that they're going to be on one day of the month saying to the bureaus what you owed, how many of the 10 cookies in the cookie jar did you eat? Did you eat one and had total self control? Or did you eat eight? Because that credit score is going to be mostly impacted by your control level of the cookies. - Interesting. - Yeah. - So you don't want to be zero. - Right. - And if you pay your credit cards often full every month, this applies to you. You need to make sure that they, on your two oldest accounts, you have a $20 balance reporting. Once you have a $20 balance, it's better than zero. Your score will be about 15, 20 points higher with precisely a $20 amount reporting. Regardless of the limit, I know it. That'll be the craziest thing you'll go, what we should talk about. I'm serious. $20 on two opened credit cards, then what you can do is the remaining accounts you still have open those credit cards. You can slowly stop using them. After about six months of non-use on a credit card, it'll start falling out of your credit score mix. And then you can start closing those. But you just don't want to do that until you have those two open credit cards set up on that system where the, you can use the credit card, the rest of the month anyway you want. But you got to, you got to know the day that they're going to go off of. - Yeah. - So that's going to be half your credit score. - So I think if people just get, if they got nothing else, if they just got this, right? It'll come from the page. So the two, I just want to re confirm two things. Number one, I need to know the reporting date and I should maybe set my auto payments to the day or two before the reporting date, right? - Leave just a $20 balance or charge 20 if the balance is zero. You want to time it. It's something where in a, you'll watch your credit report for a couple months or you can do it even on the credit karma app under accounts. You can look under each credit card and they'll say last date reported. Then you'll know, okay, okay, it's around the 15th of the month. So I need, I mean, when I'm telling people the builder rebuild credit, it's so precise, you have to make sure that it's not reporting more than 10% of the limit. So whatever the limit is on the card, drop the last digit. You do not want that credit card reporting more than that balance. Or your score will be lower. - And that's, that's awesome. - So, are you saying that, so a lot of people have told me, hey, I should go open a new card. Let's talk about opening cards. How does that work? Is that a good thing? - Want to be careful. Yeah. You don't want to open too many cheap ads. That's why I always tell people, if you, you don't want to just go applying for cards randomly where you don't know what you're going to get approved for. Okay. At the same time, if you go to like credit karma, they're going to start pushing companies that they sell your information to, so they can give you a free score. And they're not always the best. Credit one is number one that I talk against, that I don't, they're not a good company. They're, I've seen more trash and more lights and errors and problems when people have done nothing wrong than anybody. But I push open sky. I don't get paid from them. Although I did find out yesterday that they're like on a back order now like, with because the customer's coming in, but open skies that credit card company, by capital bank, that doesn't have a credit check. And so if you've been denied even by a secured credit card, you're putting up your own money to get a secured credit card that reports to all three creditors, sometimes you get denied. And that doesn't feel good. So you want to be careful on where you apply. And that's why with my little three step system, I tell you exactly where to go. You know, open sky and about three months after that, discover is going to be a great second card for you. And in the self-lender account for your installment, and that's all, that's the three accounts you need. You just need to maintain. If you have more than that, you need to subtract a few to get to the three. If you don't, if you have two, you need to get one more. You know, you're evolving one installment. - Let's talk about the snooty folks for a second, right? - Okay. - The high net worth folks are very, most of them, they have no idea about their credit score at all. And good for them because they have the liquidity to pay off stuff, et cetera. So I appreciate that. A lot of them are very heavy AMX, right? Like AMX is their entire life. They have the platinum card, the black card, whatever. Is there any, do you have any guidance around? Is there other card? Like how do you think about that? - AMX is just one of those that really isn't gonna, you just gotta make your payment on time. But it's not, it doesn't, it doesn't move the score much. It's just not one of those cards where you can, you can carry a higher balance or you can carry a low balance, it doesn't really move your score. - Interesting. - Got it. This is a, does my score really get dinged when someone makes an inquiry? - So it depends. You're called soft inquiries versus hard inquiries. And a hard inquiry, it really accounts for total, like less than 10% of your score having inquiries. However, if you're gonna apply for a mortgage or a car and they run your credit 10 times. In a two week timeframe, you can have several car places and lenders run your credit multiple times. And it counts as one hard inquiry. But you have soft inquiries that happen every day when banks will get, you know, pre-approved, trying to see if you're pre-approved or not. You can, you can go to like an opt out pre-screen.com and get yourself off some of those lists, you know, for them to be able to do that. But soft inquiries don't hurt you. You can run your own credit 100 times a day and it will never hurt you. It will never be an inquiry on you. Just think about it if you're applying for a car, a credit card, a home loan, a car loan. Insurance is not a, is a soft inquiry. When they run your credit for a cell phone, just see about what kind of deposit you're gonna have to pay or utilities is a soft inquiry. And a lot of times they call it a soft inquiry because they're pulling your vantage score, which won't even, it's not even a FICO score. So it's not even going to impact the FICO that we see. I like on a mortgage for a car or for a car, but yeah. You can pull your credit many, many times, but you still don't want, what you don't wanna do is in a short amount of time for 12 months, you know, and a 12 month timeframe. The applying for a car, applying for a home, applying for a credit card in a short amount of time. It might dock you five points. on your credit. But that's really, I mean, I've seen about 25 inquiries before on someone's credit in a year. And I got them all deleted and it moved their two points. I mean, so it really depends on the rest of the profile. It doesn't have as big of an impact. You still just don't want to let anybody run credit for you. You know, got it, got it. Can you talk about even on your TikTok lives, which is crazy, by the way, you do one every day at noon, is that right? I just changed it to Monday Wednesday Friday, because I used to do Monday through Friday. But I still on Tuesday and Thursday, I just come in at different times to a different audience. But yeah, it's pretty good. I mean, you literally, like everyone should follow you on TikTok, because you just sit there like you you do Q&A the entire time. Yeah. Sometimes an hour and a half and there's 1200 people that come in, which is amazing. Yeah. So one of the things that whenever I kind of chime into the lives, one of the things that I see you talk about often is how much like being late starts to crush you. That's a killer. And it's the biggest impact of your score, too. So how does that works? Is being late? Like what is late? How does it hurt? Yeah. Like doc, talk to me about late. Sure. And it's easy to say, I will tell you the majority of my late payment people are people that make over a hundred thousand a year. It's the majority of people that just go, I have the money. Excuse me, I have the money. I don't I'm not worried about it. And then they missed it. They're on vacation. They miss it. And they go, eh, they're sporadic 30 day later. Don't do that. Okay. You will screw yourself so much. I mean, you really have income doesn't have to do with your credits for you. Really have to get a system set up. That's automatic. And you got to keep track of your stuff. So one 30 day late, you know, it can drop your score a hundred point. Wow. And I'll tell you why that's cool. There's a double whammy that happens. Everybody in the country that has a credit score is put into think of it this way like a box. Okay. I think of it like clicks in high school like there was the drama club. There was the band. There was the prom queen, the king. Hey, you got all these groups in that group. If you're in that group, you're compared to the people in that group in their behavior. Right. So if you're there's only two out of the 10 score cards, most credit models are built off of two of them are the bad ones that you've had a bankruptcy. Okay. So those two, let's say those two, you're surrounded because you had a bankruptcy in the last 10 years, you're in this group. Right. And everybody in there's had a bankruptcy. Let's say that the range of numbers that you can be in that in that place of being in that category is everywhere from, you know, 500 to 699. That's the maximum you can get you having that present on your credit. Okay. So then you're compared. So let's say that compared to this person who doesn't have any open credit cards yet. Okay. You're doing pretty good. So out of that percentage, you have a 699 because you're right there. So then the bankruptcy falls off at the 10th year, right? And you're going, my score is going to go crazy. And it drops. And you're like, what? You moved over into a new category of people. So when you start being compared to this new group, let's just say that this whole group, they have an open credit card. They've had this much time in their history. They keep their credit card balances. So you're moving in this category. Now you're in a category where your credit card balances are a little high, but you still have a 75760 credit score, but your balances, you probably are getting up there. It's like probably 50% of what your limit is. Okay. Okay. Then you're in this category of box of people that carry a balance on their credit cards between 30 and 50% and you don't have a late on their credit report. Yeah. You get moved one 30-day late. You get moved over into the category of people that have had a 30-day late. And when you're compared to that group, that group doesn't keep us high of credit card balances. And so the double whammy, now you move not only into the box of the person who's got a 30-day late, but a person who has not only a 30-day late, but high credit utilization. And that blocks you from really being able to move up until you're outside that two-year term, that two-year time frame of when the late occurred. The only thing I can do with people to get their credit score to move up quickly after seven months, after a 30-day late, is to get their credit card balances paid down to the 20 bucks. If they continue to keep them at a high level on top of having that late payment there, their score is going to suffer every month. It's going to feel like an anchor is on their score. Until seven months, if the balances on their credit cards are low, their credit score will come up about 50, you know, if they lost 100, about 50 points at the seven-month mark. Okay, but at 24 months, it won't even feel like the 30-day late was in there. Yeah. You move into a new box, you know? But I'm just telling you the way to fix it is either to call and of course ask them for a goodwill or a courtesy removal. Yeah. 50% of the time that works. If it doesn't work, the only thing you can do is turn back to the credit cards and get those things paid off as fast as possible, don't close them and have just a $20 balance showing. And that will drown out the bad with good, quickly. That's the only thing you can do. So what is the, when you call the, you, you, you teach these scripts a lot, which are great. Yeah. When you, I have, I have a unusually weird 30-day late. I, it's never happened before. I realize it. I've been with you guys for four or five years. Is there any way I can get a courtesy removal? Can I get a goodwill removal of the 30-day late? Do you guys provide those? Is that part of your policy? And it's 50-50. Like I will tell you, nobody provided it two years ago. Yeah. And collection companies did not delete. I'm just saying. But what I've happened, I'm very close with a few people inside those industries that just over the last two years, the evolution of both of them. Yeah. Of hearing collection companies that now it's, it's, it's more 75% of them that are even putting it right on their website that they'll delete a collection. And it was unheard of a year ago. So I feel like these goodwill removal letters, we've got to kind of almost teach the industry. The more we talk about goodwill and courtesy removals, the more often they'll give them. Well, the interesting part is this, and I don't know if you've noticed this at all, is that I'm generally like, you have no idea when you're calling into a company who's assisting you. So like I stop whether I'm calling cable or whatever, I just stop and I'm like, how kind can I be right now? Totally. And it's like I even say right now, hey, how's it going with all this COVID stuff? Are you doing okay? Are you on base? They're like, okay, this guy, who's this guy? Now whatever I ask for. That is so the key. That was the thing people said to me about the script video I did with collections is like, you know what I noticed more than anything else? From a collector point of view or whatever is the kindness is that you are polite and you are kind, which we don't get. But when we get someone like you, who sounds like me me, yeah, then we're like, you know, more than willing to jump in and help. Oh my gap, people are appreciated. We'll help you beyond belief. Oh, that's such a power thing, especially like it's authentic, you know, you got her. So I could I could ask you like 500 more questions about this stuff. But there's a lot more resources. But before I go into the resources I want, I'd love for you to tell the little financial engineering thing you did for your mom. That was so awesome. Yeah. I mean, the quick story is my mom came into me about when she was about 61 years old and was, you know, I'm going to be retiring in a few years. She was married and she had, she said, I have about 25,000 in credit card debt. And it's amongst eight credit cards. And between the eight credit cards, when I make the minimum payments, which is about what we can handle every month, it's about $1,600 when I added all up with the minimum payments are on this. And I've looked at it and at the end of the year, I always owe a little bit more and I've not used the cards in years. So how am I owing more if I'm making a $1,600 payment every month? And we figured out, you know, she wasn't even making the minimum interest. Minimum payments aren't based on you paying that thing off. It's just enough for you to slide by for the month, you know. So you're not actually, sometimes you're even adding on. While my mom had got to me and said, you know, I can't, I can't do this much longer this. And I call it renting your debt. Okay, the rent a debt. And you're just, you know, throw money away. So I have her go over to lending club.com. She gets a three year loan and the three year loan, at first, she's like, oh, yeah, right. I'm not taking on a three year loan at a 15% interest rate or 19% interest rate, because we're thinking in a cartoon three or five year loan. And I go, do you know what your interest rates are on your credit cards? And then she gets them all out and she's like, oh, my gosh, it's like 20%. And I go, and it's not even that it's not the interest rate. See how long are you paying that interest for? Because when you look at it, three years at 50% interest. Okay. But what's the total interest you paid over those three years? Yeah. First is 30 years, you know, at 5%, you want to know you'll spend on 200,000, 150,000. You know I'm saying over that term. Right. So she goes over there to place for the three year loan, they give her loan for 890 a month. I'm like, you are already used to making $1600 payment a month. So instead of three years, we'll cut that term in half. You'll get paid, you know, pay this off in a year and a half. Right. So she starts making the payments. 30 days goes by though. And once she takes the money, pays the credit cards all the way down, gets two of them set up on the $20 charge a month. Yeah. She's the other one's open. And now she's got this new installment loan reporting on her credit. And installment loans aren't looked at the same. They don't care about what you owe or how much you started owing and then how would you owe now? It's just a paid it on time. That was the agreement you made. Are you paying it on time? When you don't pay it on time, you get hurt. When you pay it off, your score will drop when you have an installment loan, okay? But as a credit card, it looked like her credit card since I got paid off with cash. Because it doesn't recognize that the installment loan paid it off. 'Cause she got the cash, 30 days later, the score goes up 100 points. She went from 670 to 780. And then from a 780 credit score, she got cheaper car insurance, cheaper home insurance, repyance her card, it saved her another 500 a month. So then she's making a $2100 payment to the paid off. And so nine months later, she was debt free. And then she had $2100 every month that she started giving to her retirement back. And this is a six, you know, by 62, I'm looking at her going, that's a much better plan. This is a much better plan. I like that. Not inheriting 25,000, but it's a little something. That's so good. That's awesome. So you've got an awesome book, which a lot of people can't see I have right in front of me, which is very cool. - Yeah. - You have a course, which very cool, walks you through all of this stuff, which everyone should take. So I said, colormyqueta.com, right? - Yes. - And so you got those two, but even if people are not on TikTok, they should get on TikTok just to follow you. 'Cause literally-- - It's stuff, yeah. - And Instagram, but like literally, you crush it on both those platforms and the value that you provide. - Thank you. Thank you. I'm my new website. We've really been working on. It's launching. I'm hoping by tomorrow. We're in the last week, it's on it. Like I've never been so excited about something. 'Cause it's super, it's just a regular-- - Yeah. - It's really cool, because the TikToks go in the background. And I didn't realize aesthetically, like it looks like Monopoly. Like so when you open up the site, it looks like Monopoly. Like it's your boardwalk, but it's their TikToks going by. And then it's got this great personal message. And then it really directs you to all the different tools and how you color the report and everything. It's all just so integrated. So how to do a total update after everything has happened, you know? - Well, this is so cool. So we'll link up the new site. We'll link up the book and the course all in the show notes. Can't thank you enough. I think a lot of people just have no familiarity. - That's what my friends have been saying. Like you've got to just let the world catch up with you a little bit. Then you're gonna be like a rock star, okay? But nobody knows what the heck you're talking about right now. - Which is awesome. Can't thank you enough for doing this. Thank you so much for being on. This is super fun. - Cool, thank you. (upbeat music) - Hey, Chiron, I have a cool gift for you. I took some of my best ideas from the last 20 years and created a five day MBA. It's quick connection pact that you could listen to on the go just like this podcast. And I wanna give it to you for free. Just as a thank you for listening to the show. No fluff, no gimmicks, just pure actionable ideas for you to use instantly. You can grab it right now at businessschoolshow.com. That's businessschoolshow.com. (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]