Credit Report “How to” + Backstory: Explaining Your Negative Credit Score
February 18, 2011 by Dr. Joyce Starr
Filed under Car Loan Rights, Credit Repair Rights, Economic Rights, Mortgage Rights, Radio Shows 2011, Topics & Guests
RightsRadio.com: Credit Report + How to + Your Backstory: Most people assume that banks and auto lenders don’t care about your credit report “backstory” – reason(s) for your low score. My guest, credit report expert Joe Stallard, explains why and when they do. Show Date: February 17, 2011.
Joe shares a story about a client who lost several rental homes and cars due to a case of mistaken identity – but it’s definitely not what you think. Listen and enjoy.
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Interview highlights: How a good financial manager can use your credit history backstory to reverse an initial credit rejection.
“A really good financial manager – whether auto or mortgage – will typically be the person who pulls your credit file and examines it. The job of a good credit manager is to explore those issues with you.
Lazy Finance Manager
“A young man visited us at the car dealership. He had filed for bankruptcy, but we noticed that he had good credit two years prior to filing. He lost a couple of mortgages/houses to foreclosure and 3 vehicles were repossessed. We realized that there must have been an event. We told him that the banks need to know what happened to you – your story.
He said it was a case of mistaken identity.
“That piqued our interest. We said, ‘What do you mean by mistaken identity?’ He responded: ‘I was mistaken for someone else and shot 5 times. While in the hospital, I lost my homes and my vehicles.’
“This was confirmed by over 100k in medical bills. The bank said it didn’t want anything to do with him. We replied, ‘You need to hear his story.’
“The bank finally said, OK, we will do the deal with at least 5k down. It wasn’t a problem. He was a tradesman in the construction industry and was good at what he did. He was able to get his new truck, his credit on track, bought another house and wiped out the issues that plagued his credit history.
“Most people think that the banks don’t care about your backstory. They do, but someone must advocate on your behalf and tell them what happened. Unless they know there is a backstory, they will look at a deficient credit report and reject it out of hand.
“Here’s the key: We waited for the bank’s turn-down. At that point, we knew which credit analyst was looking at the submission, contacted him, explained the backstory, and the decision was turned around.
“If you’re applying for credit, particularly with car dealerships, your initial contact will be the financial manager at the car dealership. While some are lazy and will drop it from the start, others will go the extra step and try to convince the bank that this is a contract worth considering. Finding yourself a good dealership who is ready to be your advocate is an important issue.
“It’s based on relationships – do I want to do business with these people? In the mortgage industry, you’re still dealing with a point person. It may be the loan person at the bank or at the mortgage company. There should be one person you can talk to directly. They want to put the deal together and are looking for reasons. You need to have a good backstory.
To your credit!
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The Rights Radio Self Help Hour features outrageous bank overdraft fees. Consumers are being raked over the coals by overdraft rates and by the reordering of debits to increase fees. Show Date: April 9, 2009 Rights Radio financial guru Joe Stallard joins me in identifying ways to prevent or reduce exorbitant …
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US Economic Numbers Don’t Add Up: Why So Giddy Over Economic Recovery?
April 18, 2010 by Dr. Joyce Starr
Filed under Economic Recovery Rights, Economic Rights, Radio Shows 2010, Topics & Guests
Contradiction! We’re nearly 13 trillion in debt but the economy is recovering. The stock market has outstripped Vegas as the playground of choice for bankers, brokers and the super-rich (again), while American workers depend on a roll of the dice. Dr. Joyce Starr & Joe Stallard discuss an obvious contradiction: How can the US economy be so healthy and so sick at the same time? Show Date: None other than April 15, 2010.
Contradictions Abound
Contradictions Abound
Why are so many mainstream commentators positively giddy about economic recovery? Personally, I don’t know a single giddy American.
Then again, I don’t know even one of the 29 hedge fund managers who raked in 50 billion dollars over the last two years. Nor have I received thank you notes from any of the bankers who received million dollar bonuses for masterfully using tax payer funds to transform their failures into success.
Question: If economic recovery is such an overwhelming fact, then why not give ALL the remaining Tarp funds back to the American people?
US Economy at a Glance:
- Unfunded liabilities – over 108 trillion dollars.
- Debt per family – $690,000
- US total debt – 55.7 trillion on April 15, 2010
- US Federal budget Deficit – 1.4 trillion and rising
- Number of years that most Americans work to pay their taxes: 20!
SEC & April 16, 2010 – The SEC admits on April 16, 2010 that they’ve known about another multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme since the late 1990s, but failed stop the fraud. The SEC announces an investigation into Goldman Sachs for insider trading on the very same day – April 16, 2010. Coincidence?
The Securities and Exchange Commission knew that Texas-based financier R. Allen Stanford was probably running a Ponzi scheme 12 years before it halted the fraud, potentially costing investors more than a billion dollars, according to the agency’s internal watchdog. – Washington Post, April 16, 2010.
And from former NY Attorney General/Governor Eliot Spitzer (when he was still paying attention to his job):
When my office, along with the Department of Justice, warned that some of American International Group‘s reinsurance transactions were little more than efforts to create the false impression of extra capital on the company’s balance sheet, we were jeered at for attacking one of the nation’s great insurance companies, which surely knew how to balance risk and reward. And when the attorneys general of all 50 states sought to investigate subprime lending, believing that some lending practices might be toxic, we were blocked by a coalition of the major banks and the Bush administration, which invoked a rarely used statute to preempt the states’ ability to probe. The administration claimed that it had the situation under control and that our inquiry was unnecessary. Time and again, whether at the state level, in Congress or at the Securities and Exchange Commission under Bill Donaldson, those who tried to enforce the basic principles that would allow the market to survive were told that the “invisible hand” of the market and self-regulation could handle the task alone. – How to Ground the Street, Washington Post, November, 2008.
Listen to the 15 minute show below:
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To your economic rights!
Bank Overdrafts: Outrageous Bank Overdraft Fees & Practices – How to Prevent Excessive Overdraft Fees
January 10, 2010 by Dr. Joyce Starr
Filed under Banking Rights, Economic Rights, Topics & Guests
The Rights Radio Self Help Hour features outrageous bank overdraft fees. Consumers are being raked over the coals by overdraft rates and by the reordering of debits to increase fees. Show Date: April 9, 2009
Rights Radio financial guru Joe Stallard joins me in identifying ways to prevent or reduce exorbitant bank overdraft fees.The streaming replay is available below.
The Federal Reserve’s website has been hit with repeated complaints about unexpected overdraft fees, exorbitant overdraft fee rates and the reordering of debits to increase fees. Consumers complain about being raked over the coals and about the “reprioritizing” of their transactions.
The bottom line: We’re told that “bailout” banks have more cash stashed away then they did prior to the banking crisis – and your overdraft fees are only making them richer.
Discover key steps you can take to prevent exorbitant bank overdraft fees.
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POST UPDATE: January 2010!
This show and post generated many comments and questions! I promised you an update and here it is:
- Many banks provide instant overdraft protection and charge $39.00 every time you exceed your balance. A number of banks have “reportedly” agreed to limit how many times they will charge customers on a single day and also allow them to opt out of “instant” overdraft protection. Call your bank and ask about their policy. Get it in writing if possible. A bank that permits up to five overdrafts per day, but refuses to limit the number of times they can charge you should be avoided.
- Best Choice! Ask for FREE overdraft protection. If they grant it, the bank is supposed to phone you and allow you a day or more to cover the short-fall at no charge. (Make sure they do both.) Alternatively, sign up for true overdraft protection linked to your savings account or credit card. You may still incur a fee, but it should be much lower.
- The big problem arises when banks process your largest expense last on a given day, rather than in chronological order. The first check or charge might be $10.00, the second $20 and so on. No problem – no overdraft. But when the $450 check hits, you’re out $39 and in the red. The solution: Make sure that your bank processes your transactions in chronological order. (CNBC personal-finance expert Carment Wong Ulrich, author of “Generation Debt,” Parade, November 15, 2009.)
- Use your debit card sparingly when you travel overseas or purchase online from a company located outside of the United States, because you can incur a 2 to 3 percent fee per transaction.
- Choose a bank that requires little or no minimum and thus no penalty if your account falls below a certain level. Many banks provide free checking with no minimums for seniors and students.
- Ask for a brochure or written statement re clearing out of state checks. Don’t assume that the check will clear in 24 hours. Banks only count business days versus calendar days so that they can use your money for free, (naturally).
To your empowerment!
News Overload Stress Syndrome – How to stay informed when the news makes you sick?
October 25, 2009 by Dr. Joyce Starr
Filed under Health Rights, Stress Reduction
News overload and chronic stress. We’re all feeling it. Bad news, chaotic news, terrifying news, indiscernible news – hitting us daily with the force of a tornado. How do we protect ourselves while remaining informed?
Is the babble of 2009 at least partly intentional? We barely recover from the news that senators plan to vote on health care bill without reading it — what could that possibly mean for the future of democracy? — when we learn that Florida hospitals plan to deny care to those suffering from late stage cancer and terminal illnesses if the state is hit with an H1N1 pandemic.
But the stock market keeps accelerating and Wall Street brokers are receiving the biggest bonuses in years because we gave them billions of our tax dollars to play with. Companies that received stimulus money — and didn’t pay it back — will be forced to slash their mega-bonuses, but only for the last two months of 2009! (You won’t learn about that minor caveat unless you…watch or read the news.)
Meanwhile, 30 percent of Americans have stopped shopping, small business are slashing both salaries and expenses and Wall Street firms that did not take stimulus money are making out like….well, like bandits.
And the most important issue over the past week is the White House versus Fox News. Talk about distractions and denial of free speech.
I’m joined by my RightsUniversity.com co-founder, Joe Stallard.
How to listen: Click the play button below.
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To your health!
Jay Leno Revisited ‘With hurricanes, tornados, fires out of control, mud slides, flooding, severe thunderstorms tearing up the country from one end to another, and with the threat of bird flu and terrorist attacks, are we sure this is a good time to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance?’
