THE Cambridge Connection - Episode 46

She was funny, smart, caring, and just beautiful inside and out. She was such a positive person, just a bright light for anyone who encountered her. I’m going to miss her terribly. Heaven gained an angel. A funny story from Karen, she went to Mexico and was telling Julie about how she found this amazing spice called tagine, and they put it on margarita rims in Mexico.

She was so excited because she found it in the airport for $8 on her way back, and she had said to Julie that she bought it for $8 in the airport, and Julie had said, Karen, they also have it at Walmart for $3. She was just such a funny person with such great attitude, kindness, love, just sense of humor, and her and Karen had laughed at that because obviously she thought it was such a rare spice, but you could really get it anywhere. From Sonia at Cambridge, Julie described in one word chispa, which means spark. A spark is very special. Sparks are interests or passions that light a fire in a person’s life.

Spark expresses the core of who a person is and how they want to engage with the world around them. A person with a fiery personality, that is who our dear Julie is. She will be remembered forever, a sparky, beautiful, fun, and loving friend. And Mary Beth, that’s how lucky we are to have her as long as we did since her tragic accident. She is truly a sweet and kind soul, a true inspiration to all of us.

And then lastly, on a customer perspective, on Facebook, we selected Cambridge Credit Counseling from a list of services suggested by a lender during our quest for a reverse mortgage. Julie Correa is our counselor, and we found her services helpful and courteous. She walked us through the process of comparing the costs from the lender’s quotes, leaving the decisions to us. Kudos to Julissa and the Cambridge Credit for helping demystify the process as we continue our quest. I can tell you from meeting Julie, again, tragic, lost the use of her legs, was in a wheelchair, and every day, just beautiful, sparky, smiling, laughing, wonderful, cared about people.

Julie, you will be truly missed by all your family and friends. This is Gordon Oliver with The Cambridge Connection. We’ll be right back. Are the rise in prices for gas and other expenses crushing your budget? Cambridge’s typical clients save $140 per month while paying down their credit card debt at much lower interest rates.

Introducing guest Paul Oster

Call 1-800-CAMBRIDGE. Welcome back, everyone, to The Cambridge Connection. I’m your host, Gordon Oliver, flying solo today, and here to introduce to you our special guest today, Paul Oster, who’s the FICO pro and the president of Better Qualified, and dubbed the nation’s credit repair man. Paul, how are you today? I’m fine.

Thanks for having me on. We’re really grateful to have you on because having an expert to talk about credit repair, obviously there’s a myriad of different opportunities out there, some that are good opportunities to get help, and some are just fly-by-night people that are looking to cash in on people that are desperate for credit repair. Before we get into that, can you tell our audience about your qualifications, what you do in the industry, just so we can bring everybody up to speed about who you are and what you do? Sure. About 18 years ago, I was in the banking and insurance industry, and during the subprime heyday of mortgages, it just seemed that every single client that I was trying to help get a mortgage had credit issues.

And it ranged everything from collections, judgments, tax liens, charge-offs. And I was trying to help them solve those credit issues while I was trying to get them a mortgage. And I helped a couple of people, but one gentleman in particular came back, came to my office. I got him a point-and-a-half better interest rate because there were some medical collections on his credit report that did not belong there. When they came off of his credit report, his scores went up enough to get him into the next tier for pricing and interest rates.

So I saved him a ton of money, and he said, Paul, you’d probably make a pretty good living just trying to help people with their credit. It was the aha moment for me. I literally went online, did some research here in the state of New Jersey, and figured out that I could actually start a credit repair organization. I went in. I gave my two weeks’ notice.

My manager and owner of the branch of the bank at the time said, Paul, you love doing this, helping people. What are you going to do? Where are you going? I said, I’m going to start a credit repair organization. He said, I’d love to come along and partner up if you’d like.

And again, that was about 18 years ago. We really launched about 17 years ago. And it’s been great. I mean, we’ve literally helped thousands of people try and deal with the credit reporting industry. So amazing that we have a similar timeline.

Credit bureaus and FICO scores

Back in the day, I started as a credit counselor in 1996. And the funny part about it, even the sponsor of this show, Cambridge Credit Counseling, through organic credit counseling, people come to the counseling with situations, debt problems, things on their credit, et cetera. And credit counseling and debt management. Debt management is more of an approach where there’s an organic repair where you start and you’re over your head in debt and then you get some benefits to get the debt down and make timely payments. So you’re becoming a better candidate over time.

But for the consumer that has some things on the credit report, either accurate or inaccurate, it’s great to have someone like yourself that really took the true approach about setting up a business that is dedicated to helping people with a path to get themselves to a better place as their credit is needing to be. Along the way, in just trying to educate myself and get through the maze of dealing with the credit bureaus, third-party collection companies, all this stuff that happens, I went in and became a certified FICO pro. And all that really means is that I’m more confused now than I was before I got certified. Yeah, we’ve talked about FICO score. That’s a mind scramble in and of itself.

I totally get it. It sure is. Yeah, I mean, just look at what happened recently with Equifax, right? We know, and maybe I should talk about what happened, right? So Equifax released a report saying, hey, we screwed up.

We released a bunch of credit scores on consumers that were inaccurate due to a coding error. And the CEO of Equifax came out and said, you know, it’s really not going to impact that many people. We don’t really care. You know, it’s not that big of a deal. And I’m saying, wait a second, let’s really take a look at this.

And so during the time frame, it was back in March, early April. And during that time, two and a half million people had inquiries for some type of financing. So for Equifax to come out and say it really wasn’t that big of a deal, and they’ve made statements like, well, it could be, you know, as little as a 20, 25 point move for the consumer. That’s a tremendous amount of points. You know, as you know, in this environment, you really need to be a 740 or above to get the best terms and conditions, and it’s not easy to be a 740.

So a 739, a 738 is not a 740. You know, a 699 is not a 700. So for them to come out and kind of downplay, and I get it, they just went through the data breach not too long ago, this is not good for them. But we know two and a half million people applied for some type of financing. We’re not sure what the impact was.

You know, if Equifax was the bureau that was used to determine the terms and conditions for that financing, it had a tremendous negative impact on a lot of consumers. Yeah, and here’s the thing. In this economy, people are doing everything they can to survive, and information like this, it is impossible for a consumer to keep up with all of the things that are potentially impacting them or could impact them. And to have your time spent studying these things and being able to update consumers on things that they can do is so incredibly important. Yeah, and that’s just it, Gordon.

So I’m sure we’re going to talk about the companies that are not doing the right thing out there. And, you know, the second page of our contract, and this is something that the listeners should look out for, if you’re ever looking for a credible credit repair organization, I’m actually one of the founding early members of NAXO, which is the National Association of Credit Services Organizations. Not the sexiest name in the world, very hard to get through it, so just say NAXO, right? And that’s our own governing body, our own regulatory group of companies that got together, because believe it or not, credit repair organizations are unregulated in the United States. Now, we got together and we said, we want to be regulated, right?

Because if it’s done correctly, we know there’s a tremendous benefit to the people that we serve. And I’ve been down Capitol Hill twice, I’ve spoken at a couple of government affairs conferences, and the need for credit repair is probably even more ginormous than I can ever imagine. But it was very apparent in speaking to some of the legislators and our senators and lawmakers, and they have no clue as to how this thing really works and how it’s evolved to this point. So, you know, here you have it, one of the top three, you know, complaints every single year to the FTC, the CFPB, is credit and the credit reporting industry. And you know, I don’t know, I think I have an idea of how they’re allowed to continue to work with a margin for error that’s just absolutely ridiculous.

not inability, but it’s just like they fail to reinvest their monies into the technology. I’m the first guy to say they don’t have an easy job, right? I mean, there’s about 230 million credit profiles that they have to maintain, but that’s their job, right? So it just becomes very frustrating. And we saw it very early on how the process works.

You know, most of the time, the bureaus, you know, it’s not like somebody is sitting at a desk and they’re opening the letters or they’re looking at what you’ve posted online and they’re saying, wow, you know, Paul Huster really has a problem here because somebody’s reporting something erroneous. A lot of the documents that get sent to the credit bureaus are read by a computer, not even read by a human being. So the industry itself is just riddled with flaws. And it has to change because at the end of the day, let’s face it, we’re really stuck with one number, and that’s the FICO score. Consumers really need to understand.

You do have the Vantage score that’s, you know, being used in a lot of consumer-based products and services, but unfortunately there’s only one score used in underwriting, and that’s the FICO score. Absolutely. And unless you, you know, unless you really understand what’s going on there, consumers run into trouble. So, you know, here we have it, you know, it’s David versus Goliath for sure. But you know, this is the path that I chose and we’re doing the best we can.

Credit repair red flags and scams

No, it’s incredible work that’s so needed because even to deal with the credit bureaus as an individual that really has no skills in this, that has no idea, no history, no wisdom on how to go about trying to defend themselves, it’s just, it’s not an easy process. And we give the advice all the time, you know, pull your credit reports once a year, annual credit report, take a look at one quarter, one another quarter, and just keep monitoring things. But that’s all well and good on the monitoring side to see if anything pops up that isn’t accurate, but for people that have had some life changes, some troubles, some things that have put them behind the eight ball to actually work through a credit report and try to make sense of everything and try to figure out what’s my next step forward to try to take a positive approach becomes difficult at times. It does. It does.

So, you know, going back to, I got off track there. But there’s lots of things that consumers should look for, and there’s a lot of red flags out there. But yeah, the second page of our contract is called the Federal File Disclosure, and our representatives, when they’re on the phone, they will tell the consumer, hey, you do not have to pay better qualified to try and help you here. You can contact the bureaus yourself. You can try and contact the original creditors, the third-party collection companies, and you can try and deal with this yourself.

But I will tell you, you know, we just speak from experience. It’s a lot of work. So if it’s done correctly, it’s very labor-intensive, and it does take time. So we just charge a reasonable fair market, you know, fee to help the consumer. The big red flags out there are what I call excessive fees, fee gouging, and these ridiculous marketing, you know, claims.

Guarantee we can raise your score 100 points in 30 days. We guarantee this. We guarantee that. You know, if you see or hear those types of things, you have to run the other way, because it should not exist in a credit repair organization. Unfortunately, lots of bad actors got into credit repair, because, you know, people, you know, they’re easily preyed upon.

They’re in a bad position. And if I promise somebody, hey, Gordon, I guarantee I can raise your score 100 points in 30 to 45 days, but it’s going to cost you $5,000, you might pay it, because if a mortgage is hanging in the balance, an eviction, you know, there’s all sorts of scenarios, and people say, oh, you know, this is going to be great. I’ll pay this money, and I’ll be okay. And 30, 45 days later, you know, it just doesn’t happen. And then, you know, whether or not you ever get a penny of your money back or anything, you know, it’s just very, very difficult.

So it’s very much buyer beware still to this day. Fortunately, the attorney generals in most states, there was a couple years ago, they had a clean sweep initiative where they really went after some debt settlement companies who, there are some, you know, bad actors that got involved in debt settlement and credit repair. And fortunately, they did get rid of a lot of these companies. They sure did. But unfortunately, there’s still a lot out there.

Yeah, and look, even though you might have felt like you got off track, the way that you have described this, it resonates with people. We talk about this on this show. We have Steve Weissman that comes on from Scamicide. We talk about the debt settlement industry, the credit repair industry. So having you on to give this perspective is amazing.

Steps for addressing credit report problems

And people, I’m sure, will understand it because they know that fire is hot and they’ve got to really know that they’re dealing with trusted professionals. We’re starting to run out a little bit on time. So let’s kind of pivot to some advice that you can give to people that have credit problems, have some credit stuff that they need to clean up, or even some things that they don’t know how to deal with because there’s identity theft problems. So what’s the main segments of advice that you could give to consumers that are looking to try to fix things up? So I think you’ve got to start with what you had mentioned before.

You have to know what’s on your report, right? And don’t get so crazy about the scores. It’s always the information that drives the scores anyway. com, get a copy of those credit reports, and figure out what the problems are. Now if your problem is cash flow, you’re really not in a position to pay your bills, then you need credit counseling, right?

You need to figure out a household budget. You need to figure out why there’s too much money left over at the end of the month. So if that’s your issue, you’ve got to take a step back. You don’t need credit repair. You need credit counseling, credit management, money management, and then figure that out.

But if you have issues and items on your credit report that don’t belong there, that are inaccurate, that you need to verify, you might say, wait a minute, Paul, I don’t even know what this collection is. And sometimes collections are reported on consumers’ reports without the name of the collection company. It’s just a collection. It’s just sitting there. And a lot of times that happens with medical collections.

So we’re already seeing, again, a lot of your listeners, hopefully they do know that as of July 1st, paid medical collections should not continue to be reported on your credit reports. All three credit bureaus agree to this, but they’ve done this in the past where they say one thing, and this stuff does not just fall off, right? So if you have paid medical collections on your credit report, you don’t have to hire a credit repair organization. Send a certified signed receipt letter with the documents and the accounts, and you say, I demand that you take these off my credit report because as of July 1st, you agreed that paid medical collections don’t belong in my report. So you have to be proactive.

Everything has to be in writing. Most of the stuff that we do is done certified signed receipt mail. If it was as easy as just going online, they have their dispute pages on their websites and stuff like that. But most of the time it’s, oh, that’s not my account. Listen, if it’s your account, don’t say it’s not your account, right?

You have to deal with these items head on. You can also spend a little time and money putting new accounts on your credit report. And I’m not talking about, and I have to get this in Gordon, about piggybacking and buying somebody else’s credit history, right? It’s fraud. You’re committing fraud.

Unfortunately, it actually works, but you’re committing a felony offense. It’s fraud. There’s commercials and companies that I don’t know how they continue to exist and sell these things. But if you pay for someone else’s credit history, you’re committing fraud. Now, if you become an authorized user, what I call an arm’s length, it’s a family member, it’s a close friend, you become an authorized user on someone’s account, that’s okay.

And that will help. You can add secured credit cards. You can use companies like Grow and Self that will give you credit builder loans that get reported on your credit reports. Some banks and credit unions have credit builder loans also. So it’s a numbers game.

Sure. If you have five, let’s say you have five accounts reporting on your credit report, and three of them are negative, right? By adding some new open, active, positive activity, you’re going to raise your scores. It does not happen overnight. It takes months and months and months for those new accounts to actually really start to have an impact on your credit score.

I’m sure you’ve said it a thousand times, but time is your best friend, right? It is. As stuff goes into history, it carries less and less weight towards today’s scores. So if you’ve screwed up in the past, you have some things on your report, it does not take seven years to, you know, quote unquote, fix your credit. It can happen in 12 months, sometimes sooner, but time is your best friend.

Time is your best friend. And you’re saying it right, because we’re running out of time. So much stuff to talk about. Talk about, Paul, and I’d love to have you back on the show so we can do some segmented learning information. This show’s about financial wisdom, empowerment, and getting people to know that there is honest help out there.

Guest contact information and sign off

So before I let you go, could you let our listeners know where they can find you? Yeah. It’s easy. com. com.

The consultation and analysis is free. And if you choose to hire us to help you, we do have a money-back guarantee. We have an A rating with the Better Business Bureau. And we’ve been doing this for 17 years, so we understand what it takes to get you from point A to point B. Paul, I appreciate the work you do.

Thank you so much for being a guest and giving this great information to our listenership, our families, and our friends. This is Gordon Oliver with The Cambridge Connection. We’ll be right back. Well, Tina Marie, here we are, already in our mid-30s. Have you checked your license lately?

Show anniversary banter and podcast reminder

You’re a far cry from being in your mid-30s. No, no, not me. Our show, The Cambridge Connection. We’re already more than halfway through our first year of great guests and need-to-know topics. Oh, I thought you were talking about your age.

Well, that would take a lot longer than we have in this message, but what only takes a moment to share is that if you miss any of our shows on Saturdays on WHMP, don’t worry. com, click on Podcasts, and all of our shows are listed there. Listeners can find us on all the podcast sites where they listen to their favorite podcast. Well, when I get home, I’m going to listen to my favorite episode. And what’s that?

Closing thoughts and final tribute

You know, the one with me in it. Ha! Welcome back, everyone, to The Cambridge Connection. I’m your host, Gordon Oliver, and what an amazing conversation with Paul from Better Qualified. I mean, your credit, folks.

We talk about all different types of financial wisdom, financial empowerment, and there’s nothing more important than your credit. And what’s even more important is if it’s in a good standing, great. If you’ve had some problems, you’ve had some changes in life, things got bad, maybe you didn’t pay some bills because you weren’t sure how it would affect you and you didn’t feel like paying them because you didn’t think you had to, the bottom line is credit kind of follows you everywhere. It can follow you in insurance. It can follow you at your job.

It can follow you when you’re applying for things. If you do have some problems with your credit, professionals like Paul at Better Qualified and our sponsor of this show, Cambridge Credit Counseling, where they help you navigate through the different things you can do with an action plan to get yourself straight. So it’s very important if you do have credit or you know someone that’s having credit problems, it’s extremely important that you talk to trusted professionals, make sure you get a path on how to get things fixed, and stay away from companies that you can just tell are out there for your money. You’ve got to look for qualified professionals and that’s what one of the purposes of this show to help you figure out where to go for that. With that, I have a quote for you.

You know what higher interest rates mean? To you, it means a higher mortgage payment, a higher car payment, a higher credit card payment. To our economy, it means business people will not borrow as much money, invest as much money, create as many new jobs, create as much wealth, raise as many raises. And that’s from William J. Clinton.

All of this in a tough economy that we’re in, no better time to make sure your credit’s in order, make sure your balances and your debts are paid down as quickly as you can, and you’ve got qualified professionals like Paul at Better Qualified and the sponsor of this show at Cambridge Credit Counseling to help you. Julie, again, just a tremendous tribute to Julie. She was an amazing human being, an amazing counselor, an amazing friend. Rest in peace, Julie. You will be missed.

A huge thanks to our producers, Lisa and Leah, for always bringing it and helping us to produce this show. Couldn’t do it without their help. As you see, we have experts on this show to help you and we have some great experts lined up on the horizon as well. m. com, click on podcasts, or you can go where you listen to your favorite podcast shows.

Once again, be part of the conversation. org or feel free to call 1-800-CAMBRIDGE.