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How to establish good credit

Good credit scores are very important in order to get some financial help from a reputed financial institution. You will have difficulties in getting approved for an auto loan or a credit card if you are not having good credit. Based on your previous credit history, you will get decent interest rates. Very often, students and recently divorced or widowed women who had been having a joint account with their husbands now face serious problems because of having a bad credit history. Follow the tips below to establish good credit.

Check with your local bank or dept. store if they report your accounts to the credit bureaus. If they do, then you may apply for a small loan or a credit card from them. Make sure that you are regular in your monthly payments and they are reporting it to the credit bureaus. This will help in improving your credit scores. It is of no use if you take a loan or a credit card from them and they do not report to the credit bureau. Opt for a loan with terms that can be satisfied without too much of financial strain. You will easily get approved for a loan if you are ready to make larger down payment. Certain credit cards come with lower annual percentage rates. Understand the terms and conditions that apply to your account before obtaining one. Applying for a lot of credit cards in a short span of time and then not able to make timely payments will be hurting towards your credit scores because the lenders may decide you incapable of meeting all the requirements. Hence you should be careful enough before choosing the credit cards.

If you want to qualify for credit without a co-signor, you have to be above 18 years of age and have a source of steady income. You may apply for a gas card which is relatively easy to avail for the purpose of establishing good credit. Make sure that you are making regular and timely payments because your creditor is going to report your repayment history to the credit bureaus and it will have a direct effect on your credit scores.

If you are having difficulties in obtaining a loan, departmental credit card or a gas card, try to get a co-signor. Then, be regular in your monthly payments. Just in case, if you have started to miss your monthly payments to your previous creditors, enroll into a debt consolidation program before it gets too late and starts hurting your scores. You will be able to take care of a severe damage to your credit scores in time.

Lenders will give you a lot of respect if you have a checking or a saving account.

Your chances of getting approved for a loan will be less if you have overdrawn accounts. Potential lenders regard bouncing checks as a reflection of the incompetent management of financial affairs.

Apart from having a good credit history, potential lenders also look at your jobs and relocate. Being the owner of an apartment or having a telephone number in your name certainly helps in establishing a good credit history.

While you are trying every possible ways to improve your credit scores, get a secured credit card at a higher interest rate after depositing an amount. Make sure that you are making timely payments and that it is getting report to the credit bureaus.

Posted in Credit, Finance | 3 Comments »

How to save your money on balance transfer

Credit card industry has their boom period between November through February. This is the time when almost every credit card company is going to offer a variety of offers to attract plenty of consumers. They will use new strategies, different advertising campaigns to target the new customers, not to forget their existing customers on the roll.

A lot of people prefer to do a balance transfer option during this period. You can easily get a check that offers 0% interest. If this is not happening, then you always have the option to put the balance on to another card at a decent interest rate between 3.99% to 6% and no balance transfer fees incurred. You may get a good deal from the various options depending upon what you have decided to do.

Here is an example to show how this balance transfer sounds to be beneficial. If you were to use a balance transfer check with 3.99% interest and a fee of 3% of your total amount to pay off a credit card or loan with 11% interest rate, you are always going to save more money if the borrowed amount is higher. With the lower interest rate on the balance transfer, your monthly payments will mostly go towards the principal amount since the interest rate is much lower than the previous loan at highest interest rate. Make sure that you are doing the payments on time otherwise you will end up falling into the same debt trap as you were in.

Balance transfer checks are easily available to the consumers at low or no interest rates. Once you have got the balance transfer check deposited into your checking account, you can easily pay all your other debts that are costing you more money just in highest interest rates.

You can create some investments for your future by using the balance transfer check. Use the amount of your balance transfer check to pay the existing debts and the rest of the money saved can be used for creating investment.

Other good deals that you can get from the low or no interest balance transfer check is the buy now, pay later holiday package. Who does not love to go out for a vacation?? Deposit the balance transfer check into your checking account and you can easily use that money to finance your holiday package. Most of the companies will offer you a zero percent interest rate, then you cannot ask for anything better, otherwise you would have done the same purchase by your credit card at higher interest rate. By putting the balance transfer check into your checking account, you are not only saving your money on interests, but you get additional time to pay back. This means that you are not putting too much strain on your wallet.

Just make sure that you are regular in your monthly payments in the balance transfer scheme. The moment you default in your payments, you won’t be able to avail the 0 % or low interest rate on the balance transfer. You not only lose this good opportunity but your repayments will add up with highest interest rates and fees.

Posted in Finance | 6 Comments »