Chapter Fourteen 

The Ethics of Credit Improvement

One thing to note before we proceed: there are authority figures who would very much rather that you NOT attempt to improve your credit score. Ideally in their minds, the credit score should be a natural and unchanegable measure of how you're doing in life. Some would say that you shouldn't be able to do anything to increase your credit score. According to them "there's nothing you can do to improve your credit score. Just keep paying your bills and your score might rise over time." (Or, at least, they wish that were true.) These powers-that-be, who would have you roll over and play victim to your credit score include credit scoring companies, bankers, Experian, Equifax, (surprisingly, not Trans Union), a smattering of state and federal regulators and, oddly enough, several outspoken consumer advocates. They theorize that if everyone just left their credit score alone – and lived with the results of a low score for as long as the system dictates – that the population of credit users as a whole will benefit (even though YOU will be "benched" from the credit game). It's their way of saying, "Hey. Take one for the team. Just let your credit be what it is, forget about having credit for the next seven to ten years so that everyone else will have slightly better rates on their credit cards."

You may buy that argument. It actually makes some sense when you look at it from the Socialistic point of view. Karl Marx and Lenin probably would have agreed, as well.

On the other hand, you might be saying, "I don't think so. That's just NOT American thinking. I'm an individual and I'm not hip to letting my family's financial situation take a bath just so that the collective population does a little better. Forget that. Let's get working on my credit score." If that's where your head's at, then here's the good news: you have TONS of options and LOTS of opportunities at your disposal to bring your score up. Here's the bad news: if you don't take action, nothing's going to happen. Your credit score may actually fix itself over time -- a very, very long time. Typically, a bad patch of credit history (where your financial life went into the doghouse for a time) will haunt your credit score for seven to ten years. That's roughly one-fifth of your adult, credit life or more down-the-tubes unless you go to work on it (or have someone do it for you).

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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