Credit Repair Specialists

If you find that none of the above things are working for you in terms of credit repair, consider going to a company that specializes in the process. Many of these companies will offer to "clean up your credit record" for a fee. While the services of a credit repair company can sometimes be useful, depending on your situation, you must be very, very careful to avoid scams and read all the fine print: in most cases, there is nothing the credit repair company will do that you are unable to do yourself – but if you don’t have the time or resources to do it, it might make sense for you to hire a company.

The basic strategy of most credit repair companies will be to encourage you to challenge absolutely everything on your credit report with your credit bureau. The idea is to inundate the bureau with more requests then they can respond to in a 30 day period, because remember: if the bureau can’t provide documentation for something on your file in 30 days, it must be removed. It is questionable, however, how effective this really is: although the bureau must remove items within 30 days if they fail to document them, in most cases the companies will continue to investigate the claims, and when they eventually do find the proper documentation the items will be added again.

Whatever you decide in regards to a credit repair company, remember to look over the offer carefully. Also be aware that credit repair companies cannot legally accept payments until services are fully rendered. They are also bound to clearly outline all payments and terms.

Why Get a Secured Credit Card

Credit repair can be a slow process, and you may find yourself building your credit back up bit by bit over a long period of time. A good place to start is with a "secured" credit card. These cards are issued by companies that usually target people with bad credit. Unlike a regular credit card – for which you will be no doubt be turned down for if you have bad credit – a secured credit card usually requires that you give an initial deposit equal to the card’s credit limit. In other words, you give the company $500 for a card with a $500 credit limit, and they reserve the right to use that deposit against any balance if it remains outstanding for too long.

From the issuer’s point of view, your bad credit won’t matter because they are assuming no risk: you’re never going to owe them more money than you’ve already given them to start with. From your point of view, secured cards are far from ideal, but if you have bad credit, and need to engage in credit repair, you don’t have any choice. Precisely because you don’t have any choice, secured cards are usually accompanied by annual fees that regular credit cards are free of.

Once you have a secured credit card, use it sparingly but regularly and make sure to make all your payments on time. By doing this over a long period of time you will slowly repair your credit rating, and gain back the trust of creditors who have refused you in the past.

How to Avoid Debt Collectors

The final and worst step that a creditor will take is to sell your outstanding debt to a collection agency. In terms of credit repair, this is basically the worst thing that can happen: it means whomever you owed money to deemed their chances of recovering it so low that they we’re willing to lose some of the debt. In most cases the creditor sells the debt to the collection agency at a heavy discount, often half the amount owed.

When a debtor had sold your loan to a collection agency, they have "written it off" and created the lowest possible mark on your credit report. If this happens try and act as soon as possible after being contacted by the collection agent. Before you negotiate with the collection company, talk to your creditor. See if the creditor will remove the "write off" mark from your credit history – this is something they will do sometimes, in exchange for immediate payment. The basic idea is you want to do whatever you can to get your debt out of the hands of the collection agency and back in the hands of the creditor – in other words you want to clear the debt with the creditor, if at all possible.

If your creditor is not interested in negotiating payment, you’re stuck with the collection agent. The collection agent is likely going to take a very intimidating and threatening position, and will usually imply that they are willing to take you to court. The two points you should keep in mind is that the collection company bought your debt for less than the debt’s amount, and it’s unlikely they will take you to court. You best solution is to offer to make an immediate payment for less then the actual balance of your debt. Most companies are going to accept this – they’re usually making a profit on any payment that’s more than 50% of your debt, and by offering to pay immediately you allow them to close your file and spend their man-hours elsewhere. When dealing with a collection agent, only offer full payment as a last resort.

Zone Diet

The Zone Diet encourages eating 5 small, healthy meals per day, each of which contains roughly 40% protein, 30% fat, and 30% carbohydrates. This can be achieved by:

Eating more fruit and vegetables.
Eating less bread, pasta, grains, and potatoes.
Eating small amounts of low fat protein at every meal.

It is also recommended that you:

Take daily omega 3 fish supplements.
Drink at least 8 glasses of water per day.
Do regular moderate exercise.

Contact Your Creditors if You Can’t Pay

Once you have taken a look at your credit report and determined that it is accurate, the next step in credit repair is make contact with the creditors that you have delinquent accounts with. You have to deal with these accounts as soon as possible in order to repair your credit successfully.

In many cases, the top priority for the creditor will be to recover as much of the receivable as possible. Many people are surprised how accommodating they can be in terms of arranging a payment process: in many cases the creditor will eliminate the interest, or even lower the bill itself it return for immediate payment. If you can’t pay right away, propose a payment plan to the creditor that you can stick to – creditors will be accommodating to most payment proposals as, again, their primary interest will be in recovering the debt.

Remember, of course, that the whole reason you’re doing this is for credit repair: under no circumstances should to commit to a payment plan with your creditors that you won’t be able to meet – it will only make problems much worse down the road. If a creditor has had repeated problems with a customer, it’s unlikely there will be much trust in the relationship, and they probably won’t want to help you out. Instead, pick something you can stick to and explain you financial situation to the creditor. By doing this you can often achieve credit repair quite quickly.

Ismail Kadare

Homeboy Media writes about Ismail Kadare:

Ismail Kadare is customarily hailed as Albania’s greatest writer. This is probably true, but since few other writers from that isolated nation are even known to the rest of the world, it’s not all that much of a compliment.

Perhaps it would be more apt to point out that Kadare won the 2005 Man Booker International Prize and that he is one of Europe’s most consistently interesting and powerful contemporary novelists, a writer whose stark, memorable prose imprints itself on the reader’s consciousness.

Albania may be a tiny nation that was cut off from much of the outside world during the Cold War and more isolated than most of Europe throughout its history, but it sits at the crossroads of many great civilizations. The three works that make up this book each reflect one of these. The title story takes place in a gray, faceless, totalitarian society dominated by a Leader, but it is imbued throughout its pages with the ancient Greek myths of the huge empire that once dominated it. “Half dreaming, I took out a book I had just read, and flicked through the pages again,” the narrator says as he muses on the topic of sacrifice. “It was ‘The Greek Myths’ by Robert Graves…. Why had the parallel occurred to me? Because Suzana had used the same word? Because her father, like Iphigenia’s, was a high dignitary of the state? Or simply because Graves’s book had kept me buried in the world of myth for several days?”

5 Tips for Better Credit

In today’s world, credit is essential. Most of us use credit almost every day without even thinking about it: credit cards, car payments, house payments, etc. . . Unfortunately, most people don’t give their credit rating much thought until they run into trouble with it. Having a bad credit rating affects far more than your ability to get a loan: you will also have problems obtaining any kind of credit at all – you’ll no longer be able to get store financing, you’ll pay deposits on phone lines and other utilities, and face problems renting property. It’s essential to take steps to repair your credit as quickly as possible. Here are some tips for credit repair:

Get Your Credit Report

This step is crucial – all credit information is reported by banks and the like to credit bureaus, who in turn hold the key to credit repair. Most people never consider obtaining their credit reports until they are attempting credit repair, but it’s always a good idea.

In most cases there should be no charge to receive a copy of your credit report – you simply have to request it (usually in writing and accompanied by photocopied ID). When you are turned down for a credit card or loan, the company must state which credit bureau reported you as having bad credit, and you can then request a report from this bureau.

Credit repair begins by taking a detailed look at your credit report. Look for any inaccuracies – in some cases there can be mistakes on your file, or your credit information can get confused with someone else with the same name. Many people are surprised how often a company reports a missed payment by mistake.

If you find any inaccuracies, you can have your credit repaired by requesting, in writing, that the credit bureau investigate the disputed items. If you have any supporting documentation, include it, otherwise simply state where the confusion is and request that it’s looked into. This benefits you in two ways: first, if the credit bureau can not verify the information you are disputing, by default it must be removed from your file; second, if the bureau doesn’t respond to your request for an investigation within 30 days, the information in dispute must be removed.

If it turns out that your bad credit is the result of a mistake, going to the credit bureau is usually all you need to do for credit repair. Keep in mind when requesting your credit report that many credit bureaus will make the process seem more difficult than it is, as in terms of man hours it is not in their interests to be responding to many credit report requests.

Cooking Can Improve Your Memory

Forgetting small things is common for most of us. Little things slip our minds and we become frustrated with our forgetfulness in the moment and then often even that feeling slips away.

There are certain techniques that we can use to give our memories a boost. Shifting them back to a place where they were sharp and alert.

A fun way to do this is to cook. Of course certain foods aid in helping with boosting the remembering power of your mind, but the act of cooking itself can be a great way to exercise your memory.

For many people cooking involves reading a recipe, gathering the ingredients and following the directions. That’s a wonderful way of making certain that what you cook will be edible. It is however a great way to jog your memory back to a place it was years earlier.

The first time you cook a new dish, have the recipe book open. Follow the steps carefully, concentrating on each ingredient, the measurement of it and the directions for completing the dish. If it’s a hit, then it’s on to part B of the cooking to cure memory loss plan. The next time you whip up that dish for your family, keep the recipe book close but don’t open it initially. Instead, gather the ingredients, and then check the book. If you’ve got them all, you’ve scored a point. The next part is easier, that’s assembling them. Actions are an important part of boosting one’s memory and since you can picture what you did last time, the steps should come to you easily. If you do get stuck, open the book and find the next step. Doing these steps several times on different days will help implant the recipe into your mind. Soon you’ll be able to call that meal up from your memory with no effort at all.

Using Music to Boost Your Memory

Hasn’t almost everyone at some point longed to be in a rock band? Or wished they were on the radio singing a country song while they strummed a guitar? Playing the trumpet or pounding out a beat on the drums. Having the ability to play a musical instrument whether it’s the guitar, the drums or the piano is a great talent and beyond that a wonderful way to work on developing a strong memory.

One of the first steps to playing almost any musical instrument is to learn how to read music. For many people this seems like a daunting task. However it really just involves some basic understanding and the ability to commit that information to memory. Being able to read music is often equated to being able to ride a bicycle. Once you have the tools required to do it, you will always have the ability to do it. For reading music one of those tools is memory.

Once you grasp the notes you will then recall them from memory while you are learning to play a certain type of instrument. Many people once learning the basic notes can hear a song on the radio and play it without the written music in front of them. They are simply recalling the sequence of notes that has been embedded in their memory and using that to sound it out until it seems perfect.

The same principle lies behind our ability to sing along to a song we hear on the radio. Both the melody and the lyrics are within our memory and we call that up without thinking as we sing. Each time we do that we are exercising our brains and boosting our memories. This not only helps in the musical department but in other areas of our lives as well.

Learn a Language to Boost Your Memory

When we are young most of us learn one language that we use for the remainder of our lives. Normally as we enter middle and high school we are required to take on another language. For many children they can pick up the basics of the new language fairly easily.

One of the fundamentals steps in learning a new language is committing the basic words to memory. Most of us know how to say hello and goodbye in French and perhaps even in Spanish. It’s not because we learned how to read those words, but instead we heard them and committed them to memory. Remembering them when the time is appropriate we are able to draw them up from memory and pronounce them effortlessly.

Using this same technique to learn more words is not only a good way to further your vocabulary in that particular language but also to exercise your memory. This can be done at any age and the benefits to memory are just as important regardless of how old you are.

When you are in school, you take a class to learn a new language. In some cases this involves the use of diagrams and textbooks. You memorize the phonetic sounds and learn how to articulate the words properly. If you are older and looking to learn a new language you can do the same, attend a class or you can purchase a set of tapes that you listen to and mimic.

In the latter case, memory plays a significant role in learning the language because you are required to memorize the words and then recite them. While you learn each new word you are also committing it to memory. It’s simply a great way to not only learn something new and interesting but it gives you a chance to boost your memory as well.