Chapter Two 

The Bogus Brick Wall

There's nothing that Congress (or consumer advocate attorneys) can do to put a stop to financial catastrophe. Those gut-wrenching, devastating financial disasters will happen in the lives of otherwise good people. Divorce, job loss, and health crisis will always be facts of life.

However, there's much that can be done to throw a drowning person a rope. As long as there's a lifeline, most people will take comfort in knowing that a solution to their predicament is out there somewhere. We all desperately need to know that we can work our way out, step-by-step, from bad situations. While the devastation of a financial or life disaster is certain to sting for a while to come, a person can have hope if he or she knows that effort and hard work can resolve the situation.

Unfortunately, that's not the picture the banks, credit cards, and even some credit experts paint. Instead, they paint a picture of a brick wall that is seven years tall and three credit bureaus deep. They caste the impression that "time is the only antidote to bad credit" and they discourage any talk of credit improvement prior to the day, almost a decade in the future, when the negative credit listings begin falling off of the credit reports on their own. When you know that an item on your credit report is in error, where do you go and with whom do you speak with in order to straighten the situation out?

Roger found himself asking these same questions after he discovered a student loan on his credit report that was being reported in total default. This one negative listing, of course, completely destroyed Roger's once-pristine credit score. In fact, Roger had struck a new agreement with his student loan lender and had done a rehab payment program with his student loan lender. In the rehab, Roger had made increased payments on his student loans over a period of nine months. At the end of that time period, the student loans were paid in full (and Roger was feeling pretty good).

After the loans were paid in full, Roger found out that the student loans were still being reported as bad loans and that he had received no credit whatsoever for paying them off. In fact, his credit report still showed that he was in default.

Credit Revolution: Path of the Smart Consumer
© 2007 John C. Heath, Esq., Dr. Randy Padawer, Jayson R. Orvis. All Rights Reserved.
Published by Far Cliffs Multimedia, LLC

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