You Don’t Have to Splurge to Repair Your Credit

What do you consider a splurge? In honor of National Splurge Day this week, it’s worth it to take a minute to think financially about what a splurge is.

A splurge is defined as money spent extravagantly or lavishly. If you were thinking that $99.95 per month to repair your credit might be considered a budget splurge, I’d like to dispel some misconceptions about why it’s not in the least bit extravagant to hire a professional to clean up your credit report for you.

Now, spending that amount on a Michael Kors purse you bought on a credit card because you really can’t afford the whole price in cash (or spending the cash on the full price) is a meaningless splurge.

The monthly fee for a credit repair professional is well worth what you save when you borrow money and more

Successful credit repair has huge implications on how much you pay to borrow money whether for a mortgage, a car loan and even the interest rate charged on your credit cards. All lenders use a credit score to evaluate what they will charge to lend you money or extend credit and even whether they will do business with you at all. Over the lifetime of a mortgage, a lower credit score can cost you thousands and up to hundreds of thousands of dollars more, for example. Is $99.95 per month to clean up your credit and boost your credit score worth that savings?

A cleaner credit report also contributes to possibly lower insurance rates (depending on your driving history), making you a more desirable tenant for an apartment you are coveting and a more desirable candidate for a job over another candidate whose credit report shows late payments and items in collections.

Credit repair professionals know the ins and outs of the industry

The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) requires all items listed on a credit report to be verifiable, up-to-date and accurately reported. A credit repair professional can help you assess the negative items on your credit report, and then deal directly with the credit bureaus and all types of creditors, to make sure they can substantiate the information reported.  This is especially true when a debt in collection has been sold so many times that the facts of the debt such as ownership, account numbers, dates, amounts, fees and interest may be reported incorrectly.  If that’s the case, by law, the credit bureaus must remove those items from the report.

Under the federal law, you do have the right to try to repair your credit yourself if you have the expertise and patience to follow through with the process.

But, there are many more tricky rules and details involved that only the professionals know about that they can use to your advantage in helping repair your credit better than you may be able to do it yourself.

It’s a temporary monthly fee but getting good credit benefits you for the rest of your life.

Paying $99.95 per month for professional credit repair services, like those provided by CreditRepair.com, might sound like a lot to add to the monthly budget. You can also check whether the monthly fee affords any additional financial services you need such as tools to track your monthly credit repair progress as it improves and a personal credit score breakdown along with credit monitoring, for example.

Credit repair is a finite service and once you have met your credit goals, you can be done paying the monthly fee as long as you adopt smart financial management habits so you don’t let negative items destroy your credit again.

Paying for professional credit repair is no splurge. In fact it’s just the opposite: a smart spending decision to move you in the right direction for your future finances.