Wednesday, 18 September 2013
Ways to Clean Up a Bad Credit Score - Filing For Bankruptcy
Understanding your score report is important since it may help you determine your chances of being approved on your credit applications. Your credit reports score usually will help lenders and credit institutions to determine if you are good enough for credit that you have applied for. Lenders would need to be ensured that people they lend money to are able to pay back their loans. That is the purpose of a person's credit report.
When a person applies for a personal loan or mortgage on their homes, lenders would usually check upon a person's credit history to see if one is a good borrower in that he or she pays back on credit dues on time.
A person's credit history would help lenders determine the risk of that they put themselves in when approving a person's credit. In a way, credit institutions are trying to protect their own investments (in terms of handing out credit) by checking out a prospective borrower's credit report score.
In essence, a person's credit report is part of the lender's background check. It is a detailed history of a person's borrowing habits. From it, lenders are able to extract the following information about the credit applicant:
• It provides a person's identifying information such as one's complete name, past and current addresses, date of birth as well as a person's employment history
• A record of accounts that previous lenders have submitted to who the individual has loaned from in the past. This record includes the type of credit extended (mortgage, credit card, car loan, etc.), the amount of credit, the date when it was opened and a record of payments already made as well as the remaining balance.
• A record of inquiries made on the credit report for a period of two years. This includes voluntary inquiries made for previous loaning applications as well as involuntary inquiries made by the lender without the knowledge of the credit report holder.
• A collection of information of state and country court records associated with previous loans made. The loaning report also includes recorded information about previous bankruptcies, lawsuits, foreclosure of properties, liens and other judgments that can be attributed to previous loans made.
When availing of the lending report, the lender or credit institution may also get hold of a person's credit score. A score report is calculated based on the information that is provided by the credit report. This is usually done by credit reporting agencies that consider the information and provide the necessary score to help lenders better assess your future credit risk level.
Your scores is also being more commonly referred to your FICO score. The reason for this is because most of the credit scores are calculated using a software developed by the Fair Isaac Corporation, also known as FICO. Your FICO score can range from 300 to 850. The higher your FICO score figures, the lower your credit risk is perceived by lenders, thereby giving you better chances of being approved for credit.
Understanding your trust reports score makes it also easier for you to determine your own chances of being approved for a particular loan application. If you know that you have a high FICO score, you can then try your best to maintain or even improve on it in order to increase your credit chances with a number of lenders.
Knowing that you have a low FICO score may also do you some good. This knowledge will motivate you to act upon improving your credit score in order to make yourself less of a risks to lenders the next time that you apply for another loan.
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Tuesday, 17 September 2013
6 Reasons to Change Before You Have To
Ever get to a point where you wish everything would just stop because it's perfect? Maybe you've worked hard to get something to where it's at and you feel good about the accomplishment. How about having tried what works and what doesn't and you land on that which works? It works. Leave it alone. Let's not mess with a good thing.
Leaders know that messing with a good thing is precisely what needs to happen if the church is going to grow. If you wait until you have to change, you're too late. Change before you have to and you will chart the course for future growth.
I remember back in the day as a staff pastor I would run around like I knew what I was talking about and invoke that worn out cliché "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." I was really using code language for "I don't want to make the effort to change." Rather than applying the unconventional wisdom that came from books like If It Ain't Broke... Break It I unintentionally lobbied for the status quo. Why? Because change can be hard and is often uncomfortable.
A good friend of mine, Rob Ketterling, wrote an outstanding book by the title of Change Before You Have To. You need to read that book. In it he describes what it is like to discover a new life of abundance, passion, and satisfaction. And it doesn't happen by sitting still.
From my work consulting leaders and pastors on navigating change, here are six reasons I have come to believe are the driving force for changing before you have to:
1. No one ever stays the same. You are either moving forward or you are moving backward. You cannot sit still. You may think you can but just the moment you believe that, you have stepped into decline. So don't be deluded. No one ever stays the same. You will always change. Make it good.
2. Change avoids lethargy. Lethargy is a hallmark of the status quo and decline. Personally and professionally you can avoid lethargy by changing things around you. Change what you do and how you react. Not doing so produces lethargy and ultimately death. Doing so produces invigorating life and renewal.
3. Change creates newness and refreshment. On January 1st of each year, we start new. The calendar rolls over. We have to be retrained to write the correct year on the dates we list. If not, we stay in the old year. The refreshing occurs when the cobwebs of "same ol', same ol'" are broken, and newness and change replace them.
4. Change puts you ahead of the curve. If you look at business leaders you see they don't wait to react. They are proactive. They make things happen. I remember a conversation I had with a mentor/friend of mine while living in Iowa. It was about a noted commercial real estate developer in our area. My mentor said, "Bill (the developer) doesn't wait for things to happen. He goes into a corn field and makes things happen." He was ahead of the curve. Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Fast Company... these organizations change first and get ahead of any curve. You should too.
5. Organizations that resist change cease to grow. In the business classic Good to Great, Jim Collins repeatedly shows how multiple-decades-old companies that changed were able to move from being good companies to being great companies. Companies that resisted change were relegated to the also-rans and ultimately died. The mission of the church is too great for us to ever allow the resistance to change to lead it to death.
6. Our God specializes in change. He took your life when it was far from Him and made it new. He took that which was broken and fixed it. He broke your willful disobedience and gave you a submissive, willful desire to serve Him. If He loves to change people, how much more should we want to change ourselves and the church we lead? I say, let's follow His lead.
If you think about it, these six reasons to change can set the stage for some of the greatest life and ministry you've ever experienced. I encourage you to get after it and change before you have to.
Dick Hardy is the Founder and President of The Hardy Group, a Pastoral Leadership Consulting firm for lead pastors. His tag line is, "Everything But Preaching." He notes that pastors love to preach. It's all the other stuff that eats their lunch.
Dick has served as an Administrative Pastor, Chief Operating Officer, Non-Profit Executive Director and College Vice-President. He consults personally with pastors who are tired of the status quo and want to see substantive change and growth in the ministries they serve.
Copyright © 2013 by Dick Hardy. Permission is granted for the free redistribution of this article. You may contact Dick at dhardy@thehardygroup.org or visit the website http://www.thehardygroup.org.
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