How to Build Credit in Marriage 💍 | Consolidation Tips & Low Credit Score Hacks 🔑

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human Earners, what's up? Look, building wealth isn't just about making money. It's about knowing where your money is working for you. That's why we partnered with Empower. Empower is all about helping you invest well so you can go out and live a little. Their free Empower personal dashboard gives you a complete view of your financial life in one place. Track your net worth, monitor your budget, analyze your investments, set retirement goals, and more. You've worked hard for your money. Now make sure it's working hard for you. Download the Empower personal dashboard or visit Empower.com.

0:37Not an Empower client paid or sponsored. When traveling for events or festivals throughout the country, every dollar matters. We compare flights, prices, hotel rates, and restaurant options. So why wouldn't we compare rides? Personally, I always check Lyft before booking a ride. Prices can change throughout the day depending on traffic, weather, and what's happening in the city. If you're headed to a concert, out to dinner, or catching up with your friends on a Friday night, taking a few seconds to check lift could leave you with more money to enjoy the experience. Save money. Check lift. Ernest, what's up?

1:12Look, if you've been sitting on a business idea, a side hustle, or a brand you wanted to launch, this is your sign to finally make it happen. Wix Harmony lets you create an entire website just by telling it what you want. Literally, you type it and it builds a site for you with business features already included. And the best part, you still have full control to edit everything yourself. It's fast, it's smart, and it makes building a website way easier than people think. Try it today at Wix.com slash Harmony. That's Wix.com slash Harmony. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting? Think again.

1:46More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. Learn how podcasting can help your business. Call 844-844-IHEART. This is the other part because we talk about the things that credit can affect, right? Obviously your score, but it could affect loans and sometimes employment. But it also could affect relationships. This is important, right? Because you said you need to have maybe three to four items on your credit report. And some people, when they're in relationships, we've seen, I'm going to get a car.

2:20I didn't get approved. Can you co-sign? I love this. Y 'all asking a good question. This is why, yeah. We've been known to do that a few times. So talk about that. I mean, co-signing could be very detrimental. Let's talk about it. So one of the things that I do in my day-to-day is I'm a credit specialist specializing in mortgage scoring, right? So I deal with a lot of people who can't seem to close on their home, who need a few more points to obtain a home loan. Now, this is one of the things that I see so much, and we need to change it. So when it comes to married couple spouses, make sure that the accounts are evenly distributed, right?

3:03So make sure that one spouse is not the primary account holder, account owner of all of the accounts. And then the other spouse, usually like the stay-at-home spouse, is just co-signed on all of the accounts. There is something within the Credit Card Act of 2009 that says on every credit card application legally, you can use what's called household income. So if you're a spouse, if you have a spouse that maybe does not make a lot of money or, you know, stays at home, as opposed to them just being a co-signer and authorized user on all of spouses one accounts, they can apply using the income. They can apply using their spouse's income.

3:42So make sure that they still have credit cards, home loans, or not home loans, but loans and installments in their name as owner. Because when you only have co-signed accounts, authorized user accounts, then you're never going to unleash your true borrowing power because it's based on someone else, regardless of who it is. So make sure, yes, I'm glad you asked that question because that, man, that happens so often. Like, it'll just, it'll be one person has great credit and then one person has subpar credit because they don't have any, they haven't built any credit. Yeah. And that's if you're married.

4:15Yeah. Specifically if you're married. If it was your boyfriend and you broke up, good luck. Oh, well, yeah. To speak on that, co-signing, no, no, no, no, no. I won't co-sign. I'm not co-signing for nobody. Because that affects you. like if you co-sign for someone um and you can have amazing credit if they choose to not pay it or you know run up your card you are responsible for that when it comes to co-signing when it comes to um authorized users authorized users they don't have any legal um binding to that account so they can run it up they can spend every dollar and it still is going to be your fault when you co-sign for someone that if that account goes derogatory it's going to affect both persons credit report and you can't do nothing about it.

4:59So what about credit consolidation? Is that always the most beneficial way to kind of manage multiple? No, it's not. That chips away at your credit age drastically. So now, when it comes to student loans and things of that nature, sometimes it's worth it, right? But when it comes to just consolidating your everyday credit cards, I don't always recommend it unless like you're just trying to prevent bankruptcy or something like major like that. But consolidation, I'm not the biggest fan of just because it doesn't really aid to you improving your borrowing power. So if people have bad credit and they're trying to improve their credit, what's the steps to actually go from, you know, having issues, bad credit to having better credit?

5:48Yes. The good thing about having bad credit is you have a lot of points that you can obtain. Like the lower your credit score is, the more points you can grab. Right. So my favorite thing when helping someone with their credit is when they do have a low credit score, because it's so easy to get those points. You just have to understand that obtaining those points will not come from just repairing your credit or disputing your credit report. It's going to come from building credit. That is where the points are released from. Right. So making sure if you have bad credit, if you have collections, charge-offs, whatever, there is nothing that will help you other than building credit.

6:26Making sure that you have those four accounts, two credit cards, two installments, one short-term, one long-term. Making sure you do not pay off that installment early, the short-term installment specifically, because you want to build credit. right um also if you are if you do have collections challenging those right if they get removed great but if they if they do not get removed you still can have good credit with collections um because the older a collection gets the less impact that it has on your score the the more credit that you've established since the collection will help you sort of undo bad credit right um i i think i had, it was one account that I could not get removed.

7:07And again, that did not stop me from getting credit cards or buying a home and things of that nature because I had established credit that spoke to my financial habits, my current financial habits, more than those old collections. Right. But yeah, so making sure you have, you're building credit. That's what people, people will say, I have bad credit, so I'm just not going to touch my credit for seven years. It's the worst thing you can do because that's seven years of wasted time where you can build credit you can come back from collections i've never i've never and i have helped thousands i've looked at thousands of credit reports i have never seen a credit report that is irreparable ever and i didn't see 300 credit scores that's the you know that's the lowest credit score you can get the the lowest score that i've seen fico score was a 311 the lowest right it goes lower than 350 no it was so the lowest score you can get is 300 oh 300 yeah the lowest score you can get is 300 The highest you can get is 850 I've seen a 311 credit score People think that because they have bad credit They're just doomed for the next seven years That's not true Build credit and you will get credit points When you add your credit card in the first month The first month that you get a credit card Please, everybody who's watching this If this is your first credit card Do not allow that first month To be wasted on reporting a$0 utilization Because a lot of people get their credit cards And they're scared to use it So they'll just like, whatever, like keep it in their pocket or keep it in their wallet.

8:33When you activate that card, you typically are going to be mid-cycle, depending on how long your bank took to mail it to you. Go get some gas. Go buy some chips. Go do something so that you have at least 1 % to 3 % reporting that first time. The reason why it's important the first time is because when your credit card hits your credit report for the first time, you open yourself up to utilization. because if you don't have any credit cards, you're not getting a single point out of the 165 points that are allotted for you credit utilization. So when you first get your credit card, make sure that you report a very small balance.

9:08So the second that that credit card hits your credit report, which is usually like 60 days after you get it, you should see a large increase in your credit score. Go buy you a pair of sneakers, y 'all. So earners, what's up? Look, building wealth isn't just about making money. It's about knowing where your money is working for you. That's why we partner with Empower. Empower is all about helping you invest well so you can go out and live a little. Their free Empower personal dashboard gives you a complete view of your financial life in one place. Track your net worth, monitor your budget, analyze your investments, set retirement goals, and more.

9:44You've worked hard for your money. Now make sure it's working hard for you. download the Empower personal dashboard or visit Empower.com. Not an Empower client paid or sponsored. When traveling for events or festivals throughout the country, every dollar matters. We compare flights, prices, hotel rates, and restaurant options. So why wouldn't we compare rides? Personally, I always check lift before booking a ride. Prices can change throughout the day depending on traffic, weather, and what's happening in the city. If you're headed to a concert, out to dinner, or catching up with your friends on a Friday night, taking a few seconds to check lift could leave you with more money to enjoy the experience.

10:23Save money. Check lift. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.