HOW TO RAISE YOUR CREDIT SCORE FAST

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0:31Such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, a.k.a. neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A new year doesn't ask us to become someone new. It invites us back home to ourselves. I'm Mike Della Rocha, host of Sacred Lessons, a space for men to pause, reflect, and heal.

1:11This year, we're talking honestly about mental health, relationships, and the patterns we're ready to release. If you're looking for clarity, connection, and healthier ways to show up in your life, Sacred Lessons is here for you. Listen to Sacred Lessons with Mike Della Rocha on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:57podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Earners, what's up? You ever walk into a small business and everything just works? Like the checkout is fast, the receipts are digital, tipping is a breeze, and you're out the door before the line even builds. Odds are they're using Square. We love supporting businesses that run on Square because it just feels seamless, whether it's a local coffee shop, a vendor at a pop-up market, or even one of our merch partners. Square makes it easy for them to take payments, manage inventory, and run their business with confidence, all from one simple system. One of the things we love most is seeing neighborhood businesses level up.

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3:14It's not just about payments. It's about giving you time back so you can focus on what matters most. Ready to see how Square can transform your business? Visit square.com backslash go backslash E-Y-L to learn more. That's square.com backslash go backslash E-Y-L. Don't wait. Don't hesitate. Let Square handle the back end so you can keep pushing your vision forward. The first thing is you got to check your credit, right? You're trying to buy a house. You're trying to, whether it's a multifamily, whether the case is you're going to live in one, doesn't really matter. I think what a lot of people forget to do is check their credit before they apply with Matt, before they apply with Kevin.

3:57And what you need to do is you need to be able to know what's on your credit report because guess what? They're going to ask you, hey, what is this? And if you say, I don't know. It's like, come on. Like how serious are you with your credit? If you're applying for a$300 ,000 mortgage, a$500 ,000 mortgage, and you don't even, you haven't checked your credit in six months, seven months. You know what I mean? So you have to make sure you check your credit report. I would say every month, right? And at a bare minimum, but if you're going to apply with Matt, check it every week, check it every day.

4:28Like it's one of those things I wake up in the morning, I'm checking my credit first thing. You know what I what's on there? Am I on time? Am I late? What's going on? What's the deal with my credit? Because like I said, when Matt runs your credit report and he asks you, hey, what's this bill? What's that bill? Don't you think it's a little bit better to have a little bit of information for him for when he runs your credit? Or he might not, you might go up and say, hey, Matt, listen, don't run my credit yet. I have these things on here. So let's save that inquiry, right? So the biggest thing is credit data.

5:04Credit data is more important than any credit score, because credit data is what drives the credit score. So you could have a 750 credit score with a repossession and a charge off, and you can have a 650 credit score with no late payments. So these are the five categories. You usually see people breaking down in percentages, 35%, 30%, 15, 10, and 10. But when you look at how many points, Your credit score ranges from 300 to 850. Payment history alone, 192.5 points. The data is payment history. Your data is what drives the credit score. So if you're late one time, two times, three times on multiple credit cards, it'll drop your score.

5:46Like I had a client today, they were late. I called one of my clients today and said, hey, listen, you were late on your Capital One card and it dropped this credit score 60 points. His monthly payment was$15 a month. $15 a month, dropped his credit score,$60. Do whatever you can, guys, to have your stuff on auto pay. It's the most important thing you can do with your credit, especially if you're trying to get a mortgage. Debt utilization, 165 points. Your cards are maxed out. Guess what, guys? Your score is going to tank, right? This was one of my problems a few years ago. I didn't really have anything negative, but all my credit cards were maxed out.

6:21So that can easily take you from sevens to the fives very, very quickly. All right. Time and file, 82.5 points. This is pretty much why people buy trade lines or why people get put on as authorized users is because of the history. It adds 82.5 points. All right. Credit mix, 55 points, pretty much easiest category. You have a mortgage, you have an auto loan and a credit card, you're going to get all 55 points. All right. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting? Think again. More 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.

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7:33I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP, its crazy cast of disciples, and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

8:20New year, new goals, and in this economy, a better money plan is more necessary than ever. I am Matt. And I'm Joel. We are from the How to Money podcast, and every week we help you to spend smarter, save more, and make sense of what's going on out there. If you want 2026 to be the year you finally feel in control of your money, we're here to give you the tools and advice to help you make it happen. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

9:12Damn, that **** got swag. Rocky offers a window into not only a boundary-breaking artist, but as a man committed to fusing creative ideas, community, and remaining unapologetically himself. Have you ever gotten roasted for any of your outfits? For sure. Some people don't be getting the vision. Look, they can roast me, they can cook me, they can deep-fry me, they can saute whatever they want. There's nobody who can **** with my fashion sense and my taste is impeccable. I'm just like I impress myself a lot It's an amazing conversation One you definitely don't want to miss So listen to the Questlove show On the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts Or wherever you get your podcasts An increase of 55 points So you ever notice I'm sure Matt and Kevin Have heard this all the time Man don't run my credit I don't want my score to drop But then you have like Late payments and collections Those affect your score more Than an inquiry So people are always so scared about inquiries.

10:11And the most important thing you have to understand about inquiries is they only affect you 55 points, which is 10%. But any mortgage inquiries usually done within a 30 to 45 day period only count as one. So if you got your mortgage, your credit report ran by four different mortgage companies, it's not going to be four different inquiries if done within a 30 to 45 day period. All right. So don't be don't don't get so scared when it comes to inquiries. it trips me out how people are more worried about increase than late payments. All right. So credit karma is another thing. A lot of people check credit karma every single day, not saying anything's wrong with it, but just don't use it as a source when it comes to getting a mortgage.

10:50All right. Because when Matt checks your credit, he's not going to be going off of credit karma. Credit karma only shows two credit reports, doesn't show all three. Okay. So it doesn't provide experience. So you might tell Matt, Hey, I got a 680 on Equifax and TransUnion. but guess what happens? There's that collection or charge off that's an Experian and you think you're good. The reporting is inaccurate. Our clients have a preferred credit monitoring that we use. We like Identity IQ only because it's cheap. All right. It does provide all three. And you could pretty much go with my FICO. You can go with Experian.

11:25You know, something that provides all three credit bureaus is what you want because when Matt runs your credit, you want to be able to explain every single line item that's on your credit report. Okay. The next thing is, is that when it comes to your credit, right? And when it comes to buying a more, getting approved for a mortgage, one of the biggest things that we see besides maxed out credit cards is lack of credit or no credit history, right? We deal with a lot of celebrities and a lot of people that deal with cash. Like, I don't want to use that. I got cash. You know, I couldn't buy that car in full.

11:56Well, guess what? Are you going to buy a million dollar property house in full? I mean, you shouldn't. If you can, you still shouldn't, right? Use the mortgage to leverage it. So these are some credit cards right here that can help you with building credit and typically with no inquiries or only one inquiry per bureau, right? So you have self-lender. Self-lender is one of the easiest ways to build credit. It's a savings account that reports to your credit report. So you pay like $25 a month, boom, they report a credit card to your credit report. Petal, P-E-T-A-L, Petal Credit card. They're a new credit card that just came out.

12:32They check Experian. They do a pre-qualification. They approve up to$10 ,000 credit card and you can use that credit card anywhere. Another one, everybody's pretty familiar with Capital One. They will pre-qualify you and let you know if you are pre-approved for a credit card. Any local credit union is typically good. You have other ones like DCU, Navy Federal, Pentagon Federal Credit Union. Credit unions are a really good place to build credit. Trade lines, when it comes to mortgages, don't hold as much weight. So I would say when it comes to mortgages, I don't suggest you buying a trade line.

13:04Try to do it on your own or have a family member add you as an authorized user without a trade line. Okay. Because remember, building credit is more important than what you think. Because you could have bad credit and still get approved for a mortgage. But if you have no credit, there's no chance. And one of the most important things to understand about building credit is it takes six months for a trade line to be reporting in order for it to generate a FICO score. So let's say if you're brand new, fresh today, you have nothing on your credit report and you add a credit card, it is typically going to take six months for a credit card reporting every single month in order for that FICO score to really be generated.

13:44All right. Current credit cards. One of the things that we see with a lot of clients, like I said before, maxed out cards. Don't try to just pay your credit cards down to 30%, 40 % when it comes to a mortgage. Listen, if you can pay it down as much as you can, pay it down. It's just going to increase your borrowing power. That's pretty much what it's going to do. It's going to eliminate those monthly payments that you have on the credit cards and things like that. So pay it down as much as you can. See if you're eligible for a limit increase without an inquiry, because then that's also going to raise your credit score.

14:15So right now, your goal with getting the mortgage is lowering your credit score. I mean, lowering your debt, increasing your credit score, and by paying down your debt and increasing your credit limits, it's going to do just that. All right. If they're going to say, hey, we're going to run your credit for the credit limit increase, tell them not to do it because you do want to try to limit any increase up until the point of you getting approved for a mortgage. Okay. And then also do not use your credit cards at all if you know you're going for a mortgage. So if you know you're going for a mortgage, don't go to, you know, don't meet EYL down in Miami and now max your credit cards out, you know what I mean?

14:51The next thing you know, your credit score is going to drop, you know, a lot of points, right? And guess what? You're going to have to wait until those credit cards are paid down or do a rapid rescore in order for that score to get back up. All right. So this is another biggest thing that we see. I know Matt posted something about income based rate. This is where you guys can go right now. Student loans are in forbearance. Student loans are in forbearance. You can go to studentloans.gov and consolidate or refinance student loans that are in collections into a new loan even though they're not collecting on it if your student loans are negative it is still affecting your credit you can go to this website consolidate them or refinance them for free if you're the you're if you're in default you know um you do have to do a rehabilitation program for about nine months all right now i didn't want to just touch on this right quick because a lot of people have to understand that when it comes to business credit, it doesn't report on your personal credit, right?

15:48So remember everything that I was saying about maxing out your credit cards, don't apply for anything, whatever the case is. If you have business credit available, you can max it out all you want. It's not going to show up. So my problem when I bought my house was I didn't have any business credit. So I really couldn't use any credit cards. You couldn't use any money, but now if you're using your business credit cards, you can still do what you got to do on a daily basis. And in a sense, you're not hiding the money. You're just using it on a different means, right? And the other thing that we've been telling a lot of our clients to do is, is if you have a car right now on your personal credit and you have an LLC, trade that car in, get it off of your personal credit and get a car on your business because now that car is also not going to show up on your personal credit.

16:33Once again, increasing your borrowing power. So check it out. Imagine now you go to Matt, zero credit card debt, no car payments, you show him your income, he's going to be like, you know what? You can now get approved for the maximum amount because you have no car payment. You have no credit card debt. You have nothing. So that's going to be the difference of you getting approved maybe for 200, 250, 300 to 500, 600. And if you have a business, that's where you want everything to show. Because guess what? When Matt runs your credit, he ain't checking your business credit when it comes to a mortgage.

17:04He's checking your personal credit. So you can have six, seven, eight cars on your business credit, it doesn't matter. Okay. So definitely, definitely check that out because you want to make sure that you're not putting yourself in a bad position. My graduates from my school being Forbes. Bag drop. Bag drop. Mic drop. Bag drop. Bag drop.

17:39This episode is brought to you by PNC Bank. A lot of people think podcasts about work are boring. And sure, they definitely can be. But understanding a professional's routine shows us how they achieve their success little by little, day after day. It's like banking with PNC Bank. It might seem boring to save, plan, and make calculated decisions with your bank. But keeping your money boring is what helps you live a more happily fulfilled life. PNC Bank, brilliantly boring since 1865. Brilliantly boring since 1865 is a service mark of the PNC Financial Service Group, Inc. PNC Bank, National Association, member FDIC.

18:21What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

19:01A new year doesn't ask us to become someone new. It invites us back home to ourselves. I'm Mike De La Rocha, host of Sacred Lessons, a space for men to pause, reflect, and heal. This year, we're talking honestly about mental health, relationships, and the patterns we're ready to release. If you're looking for clarity, connection, and healthier ways to show up in your life, Sacred Lessons is here for you. Listen to Sacred Lessons with Mike De La Rocha on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

19:59podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we've got some incredible guests like Kumail Nanjiani. Let's start with your cat. How is she? She is not with us anymore. Okay, great, great, great way to start. Maybe you will cry. Ross Matthews. You know what kids always say to me? Are you a boy or a girl? Oh my God. All the time. That's so funny. I know. So I try to butch it up for kids so they're not confused. Yeah, but you're butching it up. It's basically like Doris Day. Right? No, I turn into Bea Arthur. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

20:37This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.