In this video, I'm gonna show you how I manage my own credit score using a
tool called Score Master and how you can use it as well to simulate your
credit score and see how many points you could add to your credit score.
Especially if you're not ready to buy a house right now, and maybe you're
looking at buying three months, six months, maybe even a year from now.
It's really helpful to increase your credit score.
Because when your credit score does increase, your interest
rate is going to be better when you do look at getting a home.
Now, what's really cool about ScoreMaster is they did reach out to me and
they're offering a seven day trial.
The link is in the description if you want to explore that along here with me.
Okay, so I wanna walk you through how to use Score Master.
Again, the seven day trial is in the description here.
So there's three main tools.
We have ScoreTracker.
So this is gonna show us obviously how our score changes over time, which
is really important to see how does your payment history then impact.
Is your score going up?
Is it going down, is it staying the same?
Also ScoreBuilder.
So what we can do is take actions here with the creditor to change possibly
the points on our credit score and then score boosts so we can see any
payments that we can make or spending and how that affects our credit score.
So we can see here the simulated amount of points that could be added
to our credit score with these changes.
Now get to those here in just a second.
We also have a SmartCredit report here shows us kind of
like a a grade school report.
And we can take a look in here.
I like that you can see all of the inquiries, public records as well.
And this is just a sample account.
This is not my account.
I thought about using my own account, but it would give away too much
like personal information and then somebody could steal my identity.
Which brings me to another point.
What's really nice about ScoreMaster is they do offer a million dollars
of identity fraud insurance.
However, I'm still not wanting to just go give out my information.
Please don't just go give out your information.
Even if you have that insurance.
So first ScoreTracker.
This is really important because people often are wondering how does the
momentum of their credit score change?
That's one of the most important things when buying your home, because
a mortgage lender is going to pull a slightly different credit score than
is available to you, from any soft pull credit site because score master
is not going to impact your credit.
When you're looking at it here, or taking any actions.
So what you wanna see then with your spinning habits, is the
momentum of your credit score.
Is it increasing or is it decreasing depending on your different spending
habits or new accounts that you open payment history, things like that.
So it's really nice to be able to see what's the momentum here.
Obviously we want our credit score to be going up, and if it's already
high, we want it to stay high.
Okay.
So next what we wanna do is take a look at what ways could we
actually build onto the score?
So let's click take action now.
So you see in this score builder, it kind of guides us through a
game plan to get to better credit.
So I'm gonna click continue.
I'm not gonna watch through the video here, but it's showing us our starting
score along with what our goal score could be by taking action on some of
the negative accounts that we may have.
So I can click review current and this walks us through kinda just a
general info about how credit works, how that score is put together, and
then also what's helping your score.
What are the accounts in here that are actually keeping your score high
or keeping it where it's at so we can see everything that we've done.
Right.
That's fantastic.
Now we wanna see what's actually hurting our score and its impact
that it has on our credit score so we can see in here, two-30 day lates.
We can see there's some late history here, late history, late history, late history.
These are all having an impact on the credit score.
However, it is low and we can explore if there's options that we could take
or actions that we could take to reduce the impacts on our credit report.
So we can click, Let's keep going.
This then shows us the different actions that we could take.
Things like fixing credit, reporting errors, getting a goodwill correction.
Paying off for negotiating debts and then removing identity
theft, if any of these apply.
If none these apply, then these aren't actions that we're gonna take.
But if they do apply, we can take the action right in here without
actually having to directly negotiate or talk with a creditor.
So what we can do is click, Let's Take Action.
So for instance, let's say on this Citibank account, it's gonna show.
Here are the problem accounts.
We can kind of scroll through these different cards here and let's
take a look at this one first.
So when we look at the history, we can then start to say, is there something
that we could do with this account?
In this instance, let's say that there was an error.
Let's say that this was an error here in the reporting of our history.
We can either explore more about this, watch a video or fix the error.
So in here, we can say maybe, I was never late on this account.
You can explain more in detail here.
Click next and then confirm mail delivery.
This is a test account, so it's not gonna actually send anything out here,
but we can read through this really quickly and then it will mail out to
the creditor with that dispute here.
Okay?
So then what we can also do, and we can go through those other accounts,
then we can look at ScoreBoost.
So in ScoreBoost, what I really like about this is, this is very similar
to a simulator that loan officers have access to, to be able to see if
you took a certain amount of money to pay down your debts, how much
could that change your credit score.
So for instance, what you do with a slider is put in how much you'd be comfortable
spending to impact your credit score.
So for instance, let's say that we had $2,000 extra that we were
like, Okay, we want to pay down some debts to boost our credit score.
So $2,000 here would add 15 points estimated to our credit
score going from where we were at, which was a 639 up to a 654.
So you can use this here when you're starting to look
at different loans, right?
The minimum for a conventional loan is 620, it's really good with a conventional
loan to have a 680 and higher.
So I can actually explore, looking at, to get to a 680 range, I
would need 41 points, and I need to pay about $5,700 on my debts.
So now that we see we can pay $5,700, pay down our debts, $5,700 to get us
to a 680, it's now going to show us the points that it could add to our credit
score and how much time with how much money, and when we need to pay that on.
So for instance, the Capital One account that we have in this test scenario
could add 35 points to our credit score in four days if we pay $4,800.
and we need to pay that by the 11th.
So that would be by tomorrow.
Okay?
And if that doesn't work, by the time the 11th rolls out, it will come up
with a new game plan for you as well.
Okay?
We can see this with all of the other accounts as well.
And then what accounts don't meet that criteria?
Now, the opposite is true.
If you're in that spot where you're like, Man, I'm actually needing
to increase my debt a little bit.
Maybe I need to put something on a credit card.
How much is that gonna impact me?
So I can see, let's say, I needed to spend.
Let's say $2,000.
Okay.
If I put that onto my cards, that could reduce my credit score by 20 points.
Okay?
So that's something really big that we need to keep in mind.
This tool is extremely helpful if you're in that spot where you're saying, I
really need a little bit more to my credit score so that you can qualify it
for a loan at a better interest rate or better terms, or just qualify easier.
Okay?
So just a quick wrap up in here.
We have the ScoreTracker to see the momentum of our score, the ScoreBuilder
to see what actions we can take with any inaccurate, or unfavorable
remarks in our credit report.
Also, the ScoreBoost to see any payments or spending and how
that affects your credit score.
We also have the credit report, SmartCredit report in here.
So you get unlimited of these.
You get one credit report that shows all three bureaus once a month.
So Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax.
There's also a money manager I won't get into here and the fraud insurance as well.
So this is what I use to manage my credit score.
I also get alerts through ScoreMaster to see if there's any inquiries
or anything that I need to take action on with my credit report.
So if you want to get a seven day trial, the link is in the
description and if you have any questions, feel free and let me know.