All right, so who do we have on the line today? Hey, my name is Nikki. Hey nikki where
are we calling from? I'm calling from atlanta. oh atl rise up! atl is in the house all right
so i'm going to give you some special treatments since you're an atlante
okay what's your uh question what can i help with
well i actually have two questions, um the first is i have student loans that i that i paid off
okay um but i want them removed from my credit score and i'm a credit score my credit report
but um i need help with trying to get them removed um the second issue i'm having is i
have a credit card where i had um a missed payment um but it was it was just one and i'm wanting to
get that missed payment removed off of my credit report as well and i need help doing that
okay absolutely well we are all family here so i'm more than happy to help so let's let's uh tackle
one issue at a time so the first thing is you said you had student loans that you want to remove
that's correct okay and they're all paid off they are thank goodness okay well kudos to
you for paying off those student loans yes so the struggle has been real for all of us
so let me just ask you a question um why do you want to remove the
student loans even though they're paid well i heard from a few people that um
getting them removed will help boost my credit score and i think that's like my ultimate goal
okay so totally with you that you want to boost the credit score but if people have advised you
to remove those student loans did they did they say that it boosted their credit score
um no i don't think well okay so our first rule of thumb is before we take
advice from people we're going to ask to see their credit scores just moving forward
because that is not accurate advice and i will tell you why um credit scores are broken down
into five different categories and the most important categories are going to be the payment
history because that's the biggest portion of your credit score that's 35 of your credit score
um and then there is the age of the account and then there's the account mix
so those are going to be the three out of those five credit score factors that are going to be
negatively impacted if you were to remove those accounts because what you you would ultimately be
doing is removing several years of payment history um you're also removing um the different types of
accounts those are um installment accounts so you're taking away the unique credit mixture
of accounts so your credit is always a little bit higher when you have different types of accounts
such as credit cards which is considered of a revolving account and then if you have the student
loan that's an installment account so uh creditors in general like to see that you have a mixture of
accounts um so if you were to remove that you've now taken away an entire category of accounts
and in addition you're taking away the payment history so those are not things
and also the age of the account once you hit that three year mark uh the age of the account really
really starts to help your credit score so those are going to be three things that you would just
basically throw in the garbage um and you would have done it because someone misguided you and
told you the wrong thing so let's not do that let's keep those student loans um and we want
those to report as long as uncle sam will report them because that is only making your credit
stronger um and it also gives you that healthy credit history when lenders start to look back
several years that is a very healthy credit history so leave the student loans alone
okay them off kudos so let's let them be now your other question was about the credit card you said
you only had one missed payment yeah or or a late payment yes okay yeah one late payment okay and so
the creditors constitute a late payment as anything that goes beyond that 30 day mark
which is fine because it it happens to the best of us um the good news is um there are ways to
get that payment status updated or adjusted so who is who is the credit card company um
capital one oh okay so you are actually you might be in luck because capital one is one of the more
lenient uh credit card companies when it comes to them being sympathetic with their customers
so um capital one has historically um updated late payments to paid as agreed um but you have
to be very yes you have to be very strategic though um they don't just randomly do it as a
favor you do have to put in a little bit of work so what i would normally advise doing
if this were any other creditor i'd say to write a goodwill adjustment letter um but in this case
capital one makes it a little bit easier and what you can do as a shortcut um kind of a
credit hack for capital one is you can reach out you can actually send an email to their ceo
and you're going to explain your situation you'll say hey i recently uh missed a payment you know i
was late making a payment uh due to whatever the reason is your financial situation you know you'll
insert the reason and you'll say hey i'm asking for a one-time adjustment for this late payment
and for it to be updated to paid as agreed and you'll want to explain that it is negatively
impacting your credit score and that you're trying really really hard to get back on a good path
and you just need somebody to help you out you want to be as nice as possible um
because you want them to be sympathetic you don't want to be demanding so once you send them
that email as i said it goes to the ceo you're probably going to get a response back from someone
that works in his office it won't be directly from the ceo himself but someone someone under his
umbrella is going to reach out to you and they'll inform you usually by email or they might call you
and they'll say hey we're conducting an internal you know investigation uh we'll get back with you
within i think a couple weeks or so and generally what has happened is they come back and they say
hey we sympathize with you um as a one-time courtesy we're going to update that payment
um and remove the late payment from your credit report and uh people some people have seen a
hundred point increase from that so yeah so it's a it's a pretty huge impact especially if that
is the only sort of stain or derogatory mark that you have on your credit um it can be you know the
difference between getting you know a super high interest rate or a really low interest rate so you
can some people see a hundred point increase just by removing a late payment so as soon as you hang
up with me you're gonna pull out your laptop or your phone you want to send an email to the
ceo of capital one you're going to write a really really nice note to him and you're going to also
mention that you're never going to miss another payment and that you've learned your lesson okay
and that's that's as easy as it is you you don't have to get out of your car and do anything it's
literally just the email give them a couple weeks and that should take care of your situation now
all creditors don't do this so i obviously cannot speak for anyone else but at this moment
in time this is what capital one is doing for some of their consumers so
i hope to hear good news from you pretty soon with an update um
yeah so it's as simple as that so does that help you out does that answer your questions
it it actually does um for one i'm really surprised on how easy it is with the credit
card you just typing up an email i'm always on my phone and my laptop anyway so that
i can just type up a note really quickly and then with student loans i'm glad
you cleared that up because had i not spoken with you that would have been a
entire what category that would have been taken off of my report which would have negatively
affected my credit score right yes absolutely you you probably would have seen a significant drop i
don't know how many student loans you have um but anytime you start removing positive accounts with
positive payment history it will severely impact your credit so wow um even if it's like a car
loan that you've paid off let it continue to report don't try to remove that car loan um
the only time you want when you want to remove something is if you've had
really poor payment history or if it's like a collection item or something of that nature so
yeah so um because you were so transparent and i appreciate your honesty i do really really
want to see you succeed and i want to continue to follow your your uh credit journey so i'd love to
give you a scholarship to jazzymac university and involve you in yes you'll be enrolled in
our 20-minute credit fix academy so yeah so this is um i want you to walk into 2022 with
excellent credit and this is one of the ways that you'll do it so i hope to see you in class soon
oh yes merry christmas to me christmas came early yes thank you you're so so welcome nikki well it's
been my absolute pleasure speaking with you and i will see you in class thank you so much yes i will
see you in class because i got other issues that i need to talk to you about well let's
work on them that's what i'm here for yeah thank you so much you're so welcome bye nikki bye-bye