At my last Increase My Credit Scores Workshop I took an informal survey and asked the attendees:

“What Do You Most Want To Accomplish After Fixing Your Bad Credit & Increasing Your Credit Scores?”

The 22 Most Common Responses Were:

1. Purchase A Home – Owner Occupied or Investment Property
2. Refinance Out Of My 1st or 2nd Mortgages
3. Get A Fresh Start After Bankruptcy
4. Obtain Non-Secured Credit Card
5. Get A Better APR (annual percentage rate) On My Car Loan
6. Consolidate My Bills
7. Get Business Lines Of Credit
8. Get Higher Credit Limit Credit Cards
9. Get A Credit Card For My Business
10. Get A Sexier Car For The Same Payment On My Current Junker
11. Get Prestige Credit Cards (Platinum, Gold, Etc)
12. Reduce My Interest Rates On My Credit Cards, Take The Savings To Pay Down Debt
13. Not Have To Put Any Money Down When I Buy A New Car
14. Get Lower Insurance Rates
15. Get Lower Utility Rates
16. Qualify For An Apartment Lease
17. Stop Fighting With My Wife About Our Bad Credit Scores
18. Stop Fighting With My Husband About His Bad Credit Score
19. Get Married, My Fiance Won’t Marry Me Until My Bad Credit Is Fixed
20. Get More Sex! When We Are Not Fighting About Debt And Bad Credit, I Get More Sex
21. Pay Off Bills
22. Prove To Myself That I Can Survive On My Own Without My Ex-Husbands Credit

So as you can see, the reasons are pretty diverse when it comes to credit repair…each of us has our own unique reason for wanting to boost our credit scores and repair bad credit.

Improving Your Credit Score isn't that complicated if you listen to good advice. First, write a letter disputing your claims that is super short and concise. Don't send lawsuit threats or quote supreme court decisions. Fixing your credit is not about legal intimidation; it's about these three points:

• Number 1 - What exactly you are disputing
• Number 2 - Why you are disputing it
• Number 3 - What specific results you are seeking

You want each of your dispute letters to have all three of the above elements. Here is an example of such a letter: Below is an example of a dispute letter that I would write: DON'T USE MY WORDS!!

If the credit bureaus start getting letters that look exactly alike, then they will dismiss them as some frivolous copy from a credit repair course and kick out the dispute. With that in mind, here is my letter to the credit bureaus:

• Your Address
• Your Social Security Number
• Your Name
• Please delete. Thank You.
• Your Date Of Birth
• I am disputing the Sears account appearing on my credit report, number XXXX, for the reason of (mention one of 13 reasons below).
• Dear Credit Bureau Name
• Re: (account and reason for your dispute goes here)

Next, pick one of the following 13 reasons for your dispute:

• Incorrect Account Designation
• Incorrect Balance Being Reported
• Account Closed By Consumer
• Original Creditor Not Listed
• Not Liable For the Account
• Inaccurate Late Pays
• Account Type Inaccurate
• Inaccurate Remarks
• Incorrect Date
• Account Transferred To Another Lender
• Creditor Classification
• Opened/Not Accurate/Inaccurate Terms
• Obsolete Account

Good credit scores start with good reasons of dispute like these, no legal mumbo jumbo or plagiarized boiler plate letter that they've seen hundreds of times. If the credit bureau agrees with your reason, then turn around and send them a second letter citing a second reason from the list. This simple method will repair your credit a little bit at a time by providing a different reason for disputing the faulty account with each credit bureau.

Before reading this article, you might have told them that the account is "not yours" (as most credit courses instruct you to say) and prayed that they won't be able to verify it in the 30-day time limit. But now you have an arsenal of effective reasons from which to dispute every bad account.

The truth about credit repair is this: There are many myths disguised as truths when it comes to credit repair. In addition, restoring your bad credit is a secret process within the credit agency system that only a handful of qualified repairmen know. I hope that you are now armed with the knowledge of truth so that you won't fall victim to false information as you improve your credit score. For More Information on credit repair Click the link below and go to our website. Author Bio: Mark Garcia will teach you how to Improve Your Credit Score fast with his FREE Instant Access to a 3 minute video about his own credit repair story. You can also download a special report on the "10 Most Dangerous Mistakes That People Make When Trying To Fix Bad Credit" available at Crushing the Credit Bureaus.

Hello Again,

It seems as though you can’t turn on any news program lately without them mentioning the new credit card legislation that is about to go into effect.  For those of you who are attempting credit report repair and are struggling with your current credit card company, here are a few tips:

#1 – Call and complain! Let’s face it, you don’t have to take this nonsense lying down. Most of the credit card companies are trying to usher in these new fees and penalties before the crackdown from the Feds takes place early next year.

#2 – Shop around – There are plenty of both secured and unsecured credit card companies that are opening up to new business.

Remember, you must take control of your finances and that means staying informed on what the greedy bankers are trying to get away with!

Your credit insider,

Mark

TEXAS……Some interesting reading for us Texan’s 

   Ok, Folks. Texas has given you complainers plenty of time to get used to the election results. After listening to all the whiners after the election, some folks from Real Texas have decided that we might just take matters into our own hands. 

   First a little history lesson. It’s our independent nature to point out the people who enjoy the Texas Lifestyle have the right to secede and form our own country once again whenever the people of Texas choose to do so. Some other states also have this right. The difference is, Texas has actually pulled that trigger before. 

   Yes, Texas was an Independent Republic before it became a state and can secede. Nothing inherently prohibits that from taking place. 

   Let’s get this straight. John McCain, a real American hero, carried Texas by over a million votes. Texans can still smell the fires of the Twin Towers . We would also honor President Bush. George Bush simply did what any Real Texan would do and that is to go try his best to annihilate anyone who was responsible for attacking us. We don’t fault him for that. We applaud that sort of behavior. 

It’s Texas politics, Texas style.   We’re ready to secede. 

Don’t get me wrong. We’re like y’all – We just don’t want to be like y’all. 

#1: Barak Obama becomes President of the United States (all the other 49 states). 

#2: Ross Perot becomes the next President of the Republic of Texas and invites John McCain to be an honorary Texan. We honor our heroes in Texas and honor their service. McCain is welcome here and he can be Secretary of the Texas Navy. Native Texan George Foreman will be Secretary of Defense. 

After that is all said and done, we wish Mr. Obama well. We really do. 

We expect one of Perot’s first acts as President of the Republic will be to tear down the border wall and erect a 10′ wall around Austin to keep the “Austin Weird” folks in and away from the rest of us. If they will just pipe their Texas music out over the wall, it will keep the rest of us happy. ( Just kidding my Austin relatives on that one.) However, Willie will be Secretary of Agriculture and music. Wonder what he will grow?

So what does Texas have to do to survive as a Republic? 

   Here’s a few things to be aware of. Texas is the 11th largest economy on the planet. We are bigger than Spain and right behind Great Britain . We are also bigger than Russia . We are an economic force to be reckoned with. We have a constitutional amendment to balance our budget..and we do it. We also have a multi-billion dollar budget surplus this year. We are so big, we have our own power grid. Yes, that’s true. 

What else? 

NASA is in Houston . (we will control the space industry). We refine over 85% of the gasoline in the United States . Defense Industry? We have over 65% of it. The term “Don’t mess with Texas ,” will take on a whole new meaning. Oil – we can supply all the oil the Republic of Texas will need for the next 300 years. Obama states? Sorry about that. 

As David Werst said, “We’re like y’all, we just don’t want to be like y’all.” You can buy oil (pronounced like y’all) from us instead of terrorist countries that hate you. We will love you for paying so much to us instead of Saudi Arabia , Venezuela , Kuwait and others. 

You don’t want to ‘drill baby drill’ or put up with those nasty oil wells? Well, we do and we know how to do it without polluting the land, air, and sea. BTW-We have our own ports and shipping lanes. We’re also not “waiting on our FEMA check” to rebuild Galveston . We are doing it right now as we speak. 

Natural Gas – Again we have all we need and again, it’s just too bad about you blue Obama states who don’t want drilling. We’ve been driving around with 
those big tanks in the backs of our pickups for years now. We’ll switch over to compressed natural gas. Obama will figure a way to keep y’all warm..according to your need. Or, you could use ocean waves, or make friends with Hugo Chavez or what’s his name in Iran . 

Computer Industry - we currently lead the nation in producing computer chips and communications: Small places like Texas Instruments, Dell, EDS, Raytheon, Motorola, Intel, Austin Technology Centers Etc , Etc. The list goes on and on. 

Health Centers – We have the largest research centers for cancer research, the best burn centers and the top trauma units in the world, and other large health 
centers. We have enough colleges to keep us going: UT, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Texas State University , Rice, SMU, TCU, University of Houston , Baylor, UNT, Texas Women’s University, etc. Ivy grows better in the south anyway. We have a ready supply of workers (just open the border when we need some more). 

But, we won’t have an illegal immigration problem. Former Texas Governor candidate Kinky Friedman solved that. He proposed we pay 5 Mexican Generals a million a year to control illegal immigration-folks coming from Mexico to Texas illegally. For every 
illegal that slips through, we deduct $10,000. Wonder how many will get across the border into Texas ? We won’t need a Border Patrol. 

We like tourism. Come stay a while. Enjoy a Cowboys game or go to Six Flags over Texas ..then go home. We don’t need any more Californians coming here and messing things up. Or, they could live in Austin where we can keep an eye on ‘em. 

We have control of the paper industry, plastics, insurance, etc. In case of a foreign invasion, we have the Texas National Guard and the Texas Air National Guard. We don’t have an army but since everybody down here is heavily armed and has at least six rifles and a pile of ammo, we can raise an army in 6 hours if we need it. That’s the Texas way. When the tower sniper started shooting in Austin a few years back, citizens piled out of their cars and pickups and started returning fire within 2 minutes. 

Our citizens are licensed to carry handguns on their person. We have a saying down here: “If you mess with the bull, you’re gonna get the horn.” And an even more remarkable finding from the past.. Average murder per 100,000 residents in counties won by Bush: 0.1 of one percent. Average murder per 100,000 residents in counties won by Gore: 13.2. In Texas , even some of our school teachers carry guns. We won’t surrender our kids to nuts and terrorists without a fight. Don’t even think about messing with us. If you want the sticker, click on it. 

If the situation really gets bad, we can always call the Texas DPS and ask them to send over a couple of Texas Rangers. We are totally self sufficient in beef, poultry, hogs and vegetable produce and everybody down here knows how to cook them so that they taste good. Don’t need any food. 

Arts? Bob Wills is still the king, but we also like different types of music, Country..and..Western. We even have our own beer. Lone Star, The National Beer of Texas . This just names a few of the items that will keep the Republic of Texas in good shape. There isn’t a thing out there that we need and don’t have. 

Now to the rest of the United States under President Obama: Since you won’t have the refineries to get gas for your cars, we’ll sell you gas too. We’ll call the gas company Texasco or something like that. Happy to do it. You won’t have any TV as the space center in Houston will cut off your communications or ask you to pay for the signal. It will be Texas Direct TV. Hank Jr. will move here and be in charge of programming. 

Did you know we don’t even have an income tax? 

We have all we need here in God’s country and like I’ve already said, if we don’t have it, we don’t need it. We will have cheap, plentiful energy. The new Texas Secretary of Energy, T. Boone Pickens will be putting up thousands of wind generators all over the West Texas plains and since everybody else thinks Texas is full of hot air, we might as well take advantage of it. 

Good luck. Y’all are gonna need it. 

Signed, The People of Real Texas

   Holy Cow! As if the the current credit crisis wasn’t enough to keep you up at night worrying about your financial future, Experian just announced a MAJOR blow to the American public and it is not a good thing at all!

   Starting February 14, 2009 Experian has announced that they will no longer all you to purchase your FICO Credit Scores. As most all of my students and loyal readers of this blog know, having the ability to purchase all three of your credit scores is absolutely critical to you knowing where you stand with regards to approval of a loan and at what rate.  Now Experian wants to take away that access to info so that you will only know what your scores is when the lender actually pulls your credit for the application. 

   Does this sound at all like a conspiracy to you??? Well, if I don’t know what my scores are before I generate an inquiry, how do I know if I will be approved? Also, how will I know what rate I qualify for? I will have to take the word of the lending institution as to what my credit score was.

   In 9 days we will no longer be able to see the same information that lenders see. While you can, you should go purchase all three of your FICO credit scores to see where you stand as of today.

Here is the link…

http://www.MyFico.Com/12

   Unless something major happens, this will be the last time you have the right to purchase all three of your FICO scores and arm yourself with the knowledge of YOUR credit reports. For some reason, Experian doesn’t think that you should have that right.

   Matter of fact,  our FICO scores were hidden from us once before. Back in 2003 we were empowered to see this information. We have enjoyed the ability and freedom to know our real credit scores for almost 6 years. Unfortunately that freedom is about to end.

   This means that you won’t know your middle score (the one that almost all mortgage lenders look at when they pull your credit scores to determine approval and at what interest rate) and will be in the dark as to if you qualify and for how much. We all will be flying blind with most major credit purchases, especially mortgage approval for purchase, refinance, etc.

THIS IS NOT GOOD NEWS FOR ANY OF US!

  I am recommending that all of my students and readers call Experian’s media relations department directly at 714.830.5300 and share your thoughts and commentary with them. Leave a message if you don’t get a live person on the phone.

  Here is the official news release from Fair Isaac (FICO)

“Fair Isaac has long been committed to empowering consumers with information. Besides helping consumers understand and manage their credit profiles, we believe that consumers are entitled to know their FICO scores from all three major credit bureaus, since these are the scores lenders use to make credit decisions.

“We were recently notified that, effective February 14th, Experian will no longer allow consumers to view their FICO scores based upon Experian data. FICO scores from Equifax and Trans Union will continue to be available on MyFico.com”

So my friends, once again we must be vigilant in protecting our rights to know our credit scores and make sure that those housing that information are accurate and up to date!

   I just joined up on Twitter and will share many more tips on credit repair, credit scores, and how to fix my bad credit. Follow me there

Stay tuned

Mark

   Many people dream of a retirement spent in luxury, and an industry has sprung up to cater to this dream. With the baby boomer generation rapidly approaching retirement age, the retirement resort industry has ramped up its efforts to provide the most luxurious facilities in the world. Retirement communities were once a drab affair for the most part, but recent years have seen the arrival of luxurious communities that offer a huge range of amenities for residents.

   When it comes to retirement resorts, Florida is perhaps the number one destination in the United States. Whether because of its low taxes or warm climate, Florida has been the center of the retirement community for many years. As such, Florida has seen the growth of magnificent retirement resorts, each striving to provide its residents the most complete experience. Although other states definitely have retirement communities and resorts, Florida tops them all in its volume and class of establishments.

   As far as retirement resorts, Florida has a great deal to offer. Northern Florida has a number of historical sites, including the well known St. Augustine. Jacksonville is a great high end city that provides shopping and night life to those seniors that want to get out on the town. A strong arts culture exists in northern Florida, especially in Jacksonville. Several retirement communities and resorts dot the waterfront in northern Florida.

   In central Florida retirees will also find several resorts. The proximity to Orlando makes these resorts the perfect location if grandchildren are coming to visit. Orlando itself offers a huge array of restaurants and shopping experiences. There are several retirement resorts in the Orlando area to choose from.

   The Panhandle area of Florida is home to some of the most beautiful natural vistas in the world. There are several retirement resorts settled in this area, offering retirees a beautiful place to enjoy themselves. Most of these communities offer large and luxurious homes, as well as a full range of amenities. Swimming pools, tennis courts, and exercise facilities are commonly found in most retirement resorts in Florida.

   Finding the right retirement resort is all about where you want to be, and how much money you can afford to budget. Retirement resorts cater to just about every range of budget. There are more affordable condominiums, as well as multimillion dollar homes.

   Okay, I took the plunge and am trying to figure out this whole Social Media thing…I signed up on twitter and am starting to share more a more at that site.

   Follow along – http://twitter.com/ChefMarkGarcia

   A retirement party is a great opportunity to both celebrate the past and usher in the excitement of the future. Make sure that this opportunity is appreciated with the right setting, theme, and gifts for the retiree during the party. Retirement party ideas should seek to celebrate the career of the retiree, and to wish them well on the enjoyment of their newfound time. The ideas do not have to be extravagant or crazy in order to make a lasting impression with the retiree and friends. Sometimes the simplest ideas can be the best ones.

   Focus on what the retiree did in his or her career to find a potential theme for the upcoming party. If the retiree was an office manager, for instance, focus some gag gifts or part of the theme on paperwork and deadlines. The retiree will appreciate this kind of good natured humor.
   If there are photographs available throughout the career of the retiree, make a slideshow out of it and have it playing during the party. This is a great way to bring back some memories, and show the retiree at all stages of their career.

   One potentially funny set of gag gifts for a retirement party are things that don’t work anymore, such as broken VCRs or alarm clocks. Gag gifts are a great way to break the ice at a retirement party, and to keep the atmosphere relaxed. Although the retirement party should have memorable moments, it should also be fun for both the retiree and the people in attendance. A video composed by the friends of the retiree is another great idea. This is an excellent opportunity for friends and coworkers to make a statement about their time with the retiree, and the impact they had on the company.

   Be sure to issue invitations to all the intended party guests, so that everyone is sure to attend. If any special theme items are needed from the guests, be sure to mention that in any invitations that are sent out. The topic of gifts should also be broached with potential guests, so that they know what kind of items will be expected. Gag gifts are a great way to break the ice at a retirement party. Above all, just be sure that guests know what kind of items they will be expected to bring along to the party.

   Although it is obvious that many seniors prefer the warm climate and leisure activities of states such as Florida and Texas, they are not necessarily the best where income is concerned. Many retirees judge the suitability of a state based simply on whether or not it has an income tax. This is an oversimplified way to judge the tax burden of a state, and can lead to paying very high amounts each year in taxes. In fact, some of the states that have no income tax more than make up for it in other forms of tax.

   Retirees want to save as much of their money each year as possible, and many are drawn to states like Pennsylvania that do not charge a dime on retirement income. Although this is an understandable reaction, failure to look closer can cost these seniors a great deal of money. Perversely, Pennsylvania is actually one of the most expensive places in the United States to live. The average property tax in Harrisburg, PA, amounted to a whopping $6,551. Combine that with $840 on average in sales tax, and Pennsylvania residents are typically paying around $7,391 in taxes per year.

   Surprisingly, states like Arkansas and Delaware are actually the most cost effective for seniors. Living in Dover, DE, costs on average around $543 per year in taxes. Kentucky is another affordable state for seniors, with residents of Frankfort paying around $1,114 per year. This is much less than supposedly tax friendly states such as Pennsylvania and Florida. Residents of Florida pay around $3,424 per year.

   Although income tax is a major component of overall tax burden, it is very important to take other factors into account. Be sure to research the cost of homes, as well as general cost of living. In areas with high home prices, property tax can really end up costing an arm and a leg each year. Avoid paying too much by researching state tax laws before making a move. The general livability of a state is also important.

   Resources such as Kiplinger and Taxsites.com can help greatly in the search for the best retirement states. Finding the best retirement states is all about striking a balance between taxes and livability. Just because a state has the lowest taxes doesn’t mean you should live there, but don’t neglect to check out a state’s tax laws before moving. Some states, such as Pennsylvania, can make your retirement dream unaffordable if you are not careful.