As recorded in the Holy Bible, people cannot serve two masters (Luke 16:10) and for the Christian this means that serving the Lord must always take precedence over “mammon” (wealth, or money). This means that unlike others, a Christian cannot steal money, lie to acquire money, or otherwise disobey the Lord’s rules for the sake of money. Nevertheless, in our modern world money is an essential ingredient to raise your family in a safe and secure manner. Like it or not, money does matter and luckily today there are many faith-based initiatives meant to help Christians facing financial difficulties while still keeping the Lord as the primary focus.
Believe it or not, the Holy Bible contains more than two thousand passages that relate to money, finances, or financial planning, which means that biblical principles can be applied to this aspect of your life just as easily as it can be applied to others. Today there are many non-profit Christian ministries that are specifically dedicated to helping Christians with their financial planning and preparation using Biblical principles. Further, there are also many for-profit businesses – like financial planners and investment experts – that also use Christian principles as the basis of their services. This means that there are many options available to Christians seeking sound financial advice, Christian debt counseling and Christian debt reduction services.
Unfortunately, there are also many false Christian services that base their practices on deception and attempt to use Christian concepts as a means of exploiting Christians in financial difficulty. Therefore it is important to do your research before paying any money to a company, whether they claim to Christ centered or not. Doing a little preliminary research online can reveal whether or not the Christian debt settlement or Christian debt relief firm has a good reputation or not.
A simple internet search of the company’s name and the names of its leadership will often pull up quite a few results. Basically you should be looking to see if the firm or its leading officers have a history of financial impropriety, have been involved in criminal complaints or investigations, as well as reviews by fellow Christians that have worked with their Christian debt counselors before.
Similarly, you can check with the Better Business Bureau for complaints or visit the website of your state’s attorney general to see if the company or its leadership have been involved in criminal behavior. Caution should be used if the firm has had complaints or legal problems in the past, or if there is virtually no information to be found. False Christian scam operators frequently change the name of their companies, so if there is virtually no history to be found, it should be considered suspiciously.
While no one ever dreams of having to enter into a debt reduction or credit counseling plan, it can be a great way to get your life back on track.
Check out this great Christian debt counseling guide for more information!
Tagged as:
Christian debt counseling,
Christian debt counselors,
Christian debt reduction,
Christian debt reduction services,
Christian debt relief,
Christian debt settlement,
Debt reduction
Ultimately this question somewhat depends on the nature of your credit problems. The best way to fix credit differs depending on what the primary problems are. However, for most people, the best way to fix your credit problems is to simply have bad information removed from their credit reports.
All of the Big Three credit reporting agencies – Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion – maintain separate databases and receive their credit reporting information from different sources. Further, most of this information is manually added to the database. This means that there is a lot of room for error and unless you closely follow your credit reports, these errors can add up quickly.
By law, all U.S. citizens and residents are entitled to receive free copies of each of their Big Three credit reports once a year. Often these come bundled as a “Three-in-One” credit report, but sometimes these bundled packages do not provide all of the relevant information. You can receive full copies of your credit report online from annualcreditreport.com or you can call each of the credit reporting agencies to receive copies.
Once you receive the credit reports you will probably notice differences in the entries between the three and this indicates that there are probably at least some problems. At this point you basically want to methodically go over each entry and there are three basic things that you are looking for:
a) Items that should not be on your credit report at all. These may involve companies that you have never dealt with or expenses that you were never billed for. Problems in this respect are common for people with common names and for people that have received a lot of medical bills. In the former case, it is very easy to get the reporting for two separate people named “John Smith” confused. In the latter case, the decentralized billing systems of many hospitals means that you may have medical debts listed that you never knew were actually owed. Getting these removed is on of the first steps to fixing credit.
b) Items that should have already been removed from your credit report. Most items reported should be removed from your report after seven years, though there are some exceptions, such as bankruptcies. Despite this, many old items remain on your credit report much longer than they should until you actively raise the issue. Many people that do not regularly check their credit reports are amazed at the amount of very old information is on there.
c) Items that have incorrect details. One additional zero added to a credit card account can seriously impact your credit score, so too can a paid off debt that is still listed as unpaid. To fix bad credit is important to make sure that the items listed on your report are accurate.
Once you identify all of the problems – and keep in mind they may be different problems on each report – you can then contest the inclusion of these items. Each of the Big Three credit reporting agencies provide options on their websites to contest items or you can do it manually through the mail. Be sure that you have documentation backing your contention as this will weigh heavily in your favor. By law the credit reporting agencies have to investigate any contested item and if you are found to be correct these items will be removed from your credit report. This is probably the easiest way to fix credit scores for most people.
Tagged as:
fix bad credit fixing credit,
fix credit,
Fix credit score,
fix credit scores,
fix my credit,
fix your credit
