today i'm going to talk about Experian Boost because it's a very easy way that you can increase
your credit score instantly and it's free so for most of us out there it's at least worth looking
into now it has been out for over a year so it's not like it's something new to everyone but they
did offer a new feature that i've been noticing in some of their recent advertisements and that's the
main reason that i wanted to create this video today so that we're up to date on everything
experian boost so one of the first questions you're probably asking is what is experian boost
now the easiest way that i can describe this is that experian is one of the three major credit
bureaus out there and they determine pretty much what your credit score is so experian developed a
new way of finding more data for you and they call it experian boost now normally we have a
lot of monthly bills that come out but a lot of those monthly bills that are recurring aren't
actually reported to the credit bureaus so what experian boost is able to do is able to go into
your utilities your cable your internet a bunch of different things that you pay every single month
and they're able to actually put those inside of your credit report and make it even better for you
and so that is what experian boost is and then something else that i've personally noticed
from all the advertisements that i've seen recently is that they now include streaming
services particularly netflix hulu disney plus and hbo so if you actually have any of those
running every single month then those can actually help your credit score just by using the experian
boost so basically if you've got different utility bills and telecom bills that are in your name
that you have to pay for every single month then those can actually help boost your score
each and every one of them so for instance water gas electric phone internet cable all those types
of things can help boost your score now it's not guaranteed that the xperia boost will find and
count every single one of those but they might and now because they've introduced netflix hulu
hbo and disney plus you can also get credit for actually having those streaming services that
you would have paid for regardless now honestly if you don't have netflix or something like that
i wouldn't go out of my way just to sign up in hopes that you're going to boost your credit score
because what experience says is that on average you're going to boost your score by 13 points so
nothing's really guaranteed here you could go up one point you could go up to as high as i've seen
as 44 points so just keep that in mind the boost isn't going to be that high and generally speaking
it's made for people with a thin credit score meaning they don't have a lot of credit history
or credit so in those cases if you're newer to the credit world the boost can definitely help you
but if you're extremely established and you have like an 800 credit score it's probably not going
to do much for you okay so the next question i want to answer is how does experian boost
work and this is also very simple because you don't have to go through a third party to activate
it or anything like that you just have to go to experian's main website which is experian.com
and then find their boost feature and once you find that you just sign up for it it's free
put in your credentials and then you also have to add your bank account that is associated with
those monthly payments so as long as those monthly payments are coming out of a certain checking
account or multiple checking accounts you'll need to add those and then you're going to have them
run their boost it happens very quickly it's also encrypted and safe so they're not reading
your bank account information they're just reading the information that they need to see and as soon
as they do that you can instantly increase your credit score by adding the boost now keep in mind
that experian boost is only looking for positive payment history and i don't know how long they're
looking for but it's probably between about three and six months so if you've had a netflix bill
for five months in a row then it'll probably count as a positive towards your credit boost
now if you have anything negative on there like for instance if you missed or had a late payment
on your utilities that is not going to be affected because of the experian boost so don't worry about
that the experian boost is only going to help you it's not going to hurt you and if you really are
concerned you can actually turn on and off the different types of bills that they find so for
instance if you don't want netflix for some reason on your experian boost then you can actually turn
that off and you'll always have access to be able to turn them on and off depending on what you want
to do so when it comes to a negative impact on your credit score you don't need to worry
about experian boost doing that because once again they're only looking for positive payment history
so they can at least try to get your credit score a little bit higher and i do want to
make a note here that if you happen to make a lot of those specific payments on your credit card
then those are not going to help towards the boost because the boost is only attributed to the
checking account that's linked and so if that bill isn't inside the checking account then they're
never going to see it and you're never going to get credit so if you really want to get credit and
you're paying netflix on your credit card then switch that over to your checking account and
basically within three to six months it will add on to the experian boost and hopefully boost your
score i also want to mention that the experian boost is only added to the fico 8 credit score
model so what this basically means is that when you go out and you get a loan 90 of the lenders
out there do use the fico 8 model so that's a good thing but there are lenders that don't use that
information so just keep in mind that just because you have a higher credit score from your boost
doesn't mean that the lender is even going to read or care about any of that information and then
just remember that the boost is only coming from experience so if you were looking for a mortgage
and the lender wanted to look at your credit score from all three different credit bureaus
then obviously the other two bureaus wouldn't have the boost information because that's only
coming from experian specifically so overall if you want to increase your credit score and you do
have those certain types of monthly bills that are coming out every month then definitely try
experian boost because like i said their program is free for the boost and it also includes quite
a few other features that can help you with your credit monitoring and those are also free as well
now they do have a paid program that's 25 bucks a month that offers quite a few other features you
can sign up for that if you want to but as for the boost that we've been talking about that is
for sure free now if you just found this channel i'm jason with honest finance and i make a lot
of videos on different topics that'll give your life and your finances more value so feel free to
subscribe if you're into this type of content but thank you for watching this video have a great day