How to Achieve a Perfect Credit Score

Series Summary

The invention of "credit" as we know it was a milestone in the journey toward re-establishing an aristocracy in the United States. Historically, credit is as old as the idea of a promise and as common as opening a tab at the local bar, but the economic system built on credit currently in place uses a more restricted meaning. An economy based on credit leaves only the lenders free and literally “scores” individuals based on their ability to stay in debt and continually make money for lenders. Many Americans believe a good credit score means simply that a person is responsible and timely in paying off the loans he or she was required to take to function in society. That is only half of it. A person with a high credit score is someone who stays in just the right amount of debt to be a good investment for financial institutions, someone who earns a paycheck that ends up in the pockets of the lending organizations. The economic system of the United States, founded at the birth of the Federal Reserve, borrows money from international banking groups and itself lives on credit. Isn’t it strange that the American market requires one to have “good” credit, i.e. owe money to someone, before this person can borrow more money? In this free video, find out some simple ways to manage credit debt, credit scores and credit cards. Stephen Fawehinmi is the vice president of the Bank of Nashville. With more than 10 years experience in lending, Fawehinmi discusses all kinds of tips to keep a credit score high. Find out how to improve a credit score by performing simple actions every month. Also, get tips for improving credit by more than a 100 points. Curious about how to get out of credit card debt? Let Fawehinmi discuss options to overcome a bad credit report rate. Discover how to apply for credit cards as well. Unfortunately, everyone has to worry about their credit. So, get some tips for managing credit scores today!

Video Transcript

"How to achieve a prefect credit score. This is a very loaded question and the reason being what is a perfect credit score? In my opinion there is none but from the banking world or from a lender's perspective, having a credit score of over 700 is what I would consider to be a perfect score. In my banking career I've seen scores as high as 850, 830 but if you do have anything above 800, then you are considered to have excellent credit. How do you achieve this? Main thing would be for you to pay your bills on time, that's the primary thing. Do not allow payments to go beyond 30 days. Just make sure you send in the payments on time and when you are sending a payment, consider the buffer time that you need for your payment to get or go through the mail, to arrive at the destination where it needs to go for it to be processed as well. One other very important thing for you to have your credit score above 700 would be to not max out all your credit cards. That's one of the factors that are in there that one of the so many different computations, if you want to call it, that the credit reporting agencies use to arrive at the credit score is to see how much you have available on the combined limit of credit cards you have. An example would be if you have a $10,000 credit card and that's all you have on your account, don't go charge up 8,9, $10,000 because that would not help with your credit score. The best would be $2,000 or $3,000, you know the lower pretty much the better. Also, if you do have any outstanding liens or maybe some derogatory credit issues that may be on your credit report, you definitely want to address those fairly quickly. Times if you have a tax lien from the government, or if you have any collections that may be going on, that is definitely something you want to handle fairly quickly and make sure that's taken off your credit report. So, that is from my perspective how you can achieve not a perfect, but a very good credit score."