| How to Build a Better Credit Rating
If you've ever applied for a credit card, a personal loan, or insurance, there's a file about you. This file is known as your credit report. It is chock full of information on where you live, how you pay your bills, and whether you've been sued, arrested, or filed for bankruptcy. Consumer reporting companies sell the information in your report to creditors, insurers, employers, and other businesses with a legitimate need for it. They use the information to evaluate your applications for credit, insurance, employment, or a lease. Having a good credit report means it will be easier for you to get loans and lower interest rates. Lower interest rates usually translate into smaller monthly payments. Nevertheless, newspapers, radio, TV, and the Internet are filled with ads for companies and services that promise to erase accurate negative information in your credit report in exchange for a fee.
Bankruptcy filings are coming back
When the federal bankruptcy law was tightened in October 2005, many people feared that the relief from crushing debt that bankruptcy is supposed to provide would be badly compromised. But today, two facts are clear. Far fewer people are filing, less than half the previous number. And the law still works for those in the direst circumstances. Judy and Henry Vandemark of Highland have been there. Late last year, they started talking to a bankruptcy attorney after falling behind on a personal loan from a finance company, Beneficial Finance. Efforts to work out a repayment plan they could afford failed, they said. "They wouldn't give an inch," Henry Vandemark said. "Even when we first discussed it with the lawyer why we wanted to go to bankruptcy, our lawyer contacted their lawyer ...
Caught in the subprime lending pinch
In 2005, Patricia Jones pulled her four grandchildren out of the neighborhood in Mattapan where they lived because she worried about crime in the area. Jones, who assumed custody of the children, ages 4 to 17, from their mother, has been steadily employed at NStar, the utility company, since 1977, rising from keypunch operator to customer service representative. She sold her three-decker in Mattapan, purchased in 1998, for a smart profit and put $55,000 down on a $555,000 house in Quincy located 100 yards from the grade school two of her grandchildren now attend. A second daughter, Keysha Jones, agreed to move in and share child care and bills. "We were both desperate," said Keysha Jones, whose two children are handicapped. Unfortunately, Patricia Jones's timing couldn't have been worse.
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