- [Robert] Hey guys!
Robert here from the College Investor.
I am super excited to show you a new product
that I'm really excited about
and I am an affiliate for because I think
it is a great tool to help you
monitor your credit and build your credit.
The product is called Self Lender,
and Self Lender is a tool that is all about
knowing what your credit score is
and improving and building your credit history.
It's a free tool for, if you just want to know
what your credit score is, they offer it to you for free,
and they give you some vary basic monitoring
that shows you exactly what your credit score is
and why your credit score is that way.
What I really love about this product though
is their credit builder account
that you can see right here.
So their credit builder account allows you
to build credit, build the credit history,
and save money at the same time.
And you can kind of see that picture
of the arrows right here.
They do it, and the name comes from,
is you're basically lending yourself money
and this company is reporting that loan
to the credit bureaus, which in turn,
if you make all your payments on time,
you'll get good credit history
and that should help you out in the future.
Now, I will caution you it's still a loan.
So if you screw up a loan to yourself
and make late payments and all that stuff,
that gets reported as well.
So you could still screw yourself.
But don't do that, make payments on time,
build the credit history, save money,
and you really get this win-win-win situation.
Now, some people will say
well you could just build credit for free.
You could get a credit card.
You could get a co-signer.
You could do all this other stuff.
And you're right, you can.
But I've found that if people wait too long
in their lives to get a credit card,
lenders won't even let them open a credit card.
So, you really are limited in your options
to build credit, and I shared a story last week
of my brother-in-law who had his hard time
getting a mortgage because he went his whole life
just using his debit card.
He didn't take a car loan.
He didn't get student loans.
He basically never borrowed money his whole life
and then in his thirties he was like,
"I want to get a house."
He had enough money saved up for the down payment
but he struggled to get qualified
for a mortgage because he had no credit history.
Like literally if you pulled his credit report
there was nothing on it,
and that was a big red flag for mortgage lenders.
And so he had to go out, get a credit card,
use it for about six months, get some credit history,
and then go re-apply for the mortgage,
and that really delayed the process
of him getting a house.
Now, there are ways to speed it up
and Self Lender is one of those ways.
Because you loan money to yourself
and they report that money, or they report that loan
to the credit bureaus, and so you will get
credit for those payments to yourself.
So it's an awesome tool.
You get started here.
It's free to get started.
The credit builder account does have
some fees to it, but they're minor.
It's probably the cheapest way
to get started building credit
if you've never built credit before.
Because your other option is really
a secured credit card and you'll probably have
to put about $200 or $500 down
as a security deposit to get started,
so this is a lot cheaper way to do it.
But let me just log in and I'll show you
exactly how it works here,
what you see when you get in there.
I already made an account.
It only takes about five minutes to make an account.
So once you log in, it's called "Hello, Robert".
There's my credit score, guys.
You can see I have 769.
That's actually the lowest my credit score
has been in the last, like, two months.
I've charged up some credit cards
'cause we just had a baby.
I paid those off in full every month
so I bet you if I checked back on this
in a month, I'd be over 800,
which is usually where I'm trending.
But you can kind of see the national average
for credit score is 714, in California,
where I live, it's 701.
And so, it gives you some factors
why is your credit score like this.
The average balance of all your accounts is too high.
Yeah, I know.
I've been spending some money.
Installment account balance is too high.
Aha, spending some money.
And then, I don't know what this means:
too few satisfactory accounts.
I've never been late on a payment
so really don't know what that means.
You know, I wish this was better,
if we're gonna do an honest review,
I wish they gave us some more facts
about your credit score, and these credit factors,
this is kind of vague,
don't really know what to make of it.
I like the score there.
I mean that's a nice score,
but like how do I make it better, right?
And this is kind of lacking.
They have a great Q&A section right here.
They have a little blog going on here.
But this is what's really cool,
is this credit builder account.
So this credit builder account
is what allows you to build your credit.
So you can build your credit in two ways, right?
You could do this credit builder account,
or you could get a personal loan
or a secured credit card.
And they make money with this whole site here.
So they make money by you opening
the credit builder account and they make money
by recommending a credit card or a secured card for you.
But really I want to share with you
this credit builder account.
It is the coolest thing that there is.
So, I want to open that credit builder account,
I want to build credit and savings,
and here are your options.
Let's go with the cheapest verse
'cause we don't wanna scare anyone away.
So, if you wanna start building credit,
you could start with $12 today to open your account
and this $12 goes right to Self Lender.
That is their fee for this.
You will then take a loan out
for $550 plus interest for 12 months,
and you're gonna pay $48.50 per month
for those 12 months, which adds up to $550, okay?
But you're paying yourself.
So they are lending you the money
but you're really gonna be depositing
this 48.50 into an account for you.
So imagine here's your account.
They give you the $550 into this account for you
and then you're paying 48.50 each month
to pay off the loan to yourself,
and every month they'll report your credit history
to the three credit bureaus.
Which in turn is going to, hopefully,
boost your credit score
if you make all your payments on time.
Now, there's no guarantee, right?
If you screw yourself up, it's gonna report
the screw-up too and you can also hurt your credit.
But basically it's gonna build your credit history.
Whether it's good or bad, it's gonna build that history.
So they have three options here.
They have a $550 loan,
they have an $1100 loan,
which is $97 per month, and they have
a $2200 loan, which is $194 per month.
The $12 fee is the same to get started
and there is an interest on the loan as well.
But then you can see, like, $97 a month,
you'll get $1100 in your savings account after 12 months.
You pay $97 a month to do it
and it builds your credit history,
it shows every month on your credit report,
will show you made a loan payment of $97.
So it's a great way to get started building credit.
I think that's an awesome tool.
Go back to the homepage here.
That should, hopefully, improve your score there,
if you're making all your payments on time.
Like I said, I haven't found a cheaper,
easier alternative to Self Lender
other than a secured credit card.
But you're gonna pay more for that secured credit card
'cause you're gonna have to put that $200
or $500 deposit down where with Self Lender
you get started with $12 to get started.
So if you are looking to build your credit,
I highly recommend you check out Self Lender.
I have a link to our full review
right below this video in the description there.
Click on it, go check it out,
see what you think.
I encourage you to sign up.
It's free to sign up.
You can at least know your credit score
and know where you stand just for signing up.
So that's awesome.
And if you want to, consider building
that credit builder account.
I think it's a great tool.
Hopefully, this made some sense for you,
you got a better picture of what Self Lender looks like.
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