Barry's Blog

The American Dream - Stolen, Lost, Denied

2006-11-25T01:20:00Z

How sad!

Whether it's buying a starter home or your second, in today's America it is extremely easy to get into that dream home. Sadly, a majority of Americans are not taking the plunge due to various factors. Many of these factors are influences that go far beyond our credit score or financial well being. Consider these three:

You're too new to credit and won't be able to get a loan! How many of you have heard this from a family member? Or close friend? Others? And instead of really taking a hard long look at homeownership we allow others to steal our dreams. Unfortunately we settle to rent.

I have rented so long and done little to save money for a real home! Losing the dream of homeownership is a self-fullfilling prophecy for some of us. Once we've surrendered to others stealing our dreams and fallen into the rental trap we lose the passion for owning our own home. If the dream is lost, it is most likely because of our own choices.

Even my own neighborhood bank wouldn't grant me a home loan! Have you ever been told by your brick & mortar bank that you've been doing business with for years that you don't qualify for a loan? Or are you simply embarrassed to walk into your bank to go through the microscopic inspection of you finances, in order to get a loan approved? It is a sad state of affairs but it is true that most of our neighborhood banks would sooner do business with a total stranger with a 800 FICO score than truly develop a authentic relationship with a longtime customer that might have a few credit dings. How cool would it be if our banks would help us into that home while at the same time guide us in bettering our financial well being? That wouldn't improve their bottom lines so banks can and always will be dream killers.

The bottom line is that nearly anyone that has the desire to own a home... can! Don't let anyone or even yourself steal that dream. And don't be denied. Make a pledge to do whatever possible to make your dream come true as soon as possible! This is my hope for you.

Getting your finances in order is a grand task when you are trying to get approved for consumer credit, but building your finances around getting a home is grandiose! If you are interested in learning more on how to make this all happen for you, please feel free to contact me or post in our forums.

Remember, the path to true personal worth is lined with beautiful homes!

Barry Noret
Founder: CreditMania.com / YourPersonalWorth.com
Managing Associate - Top Equity Funding, LLC
PH: 512.415.1276
Fax: 866.223.2718
Email: liverich@yourpersonalworth.com

Capital One Credit Cards - What's in your mailbox?!?

2006-08-30T00:34:00Z

Does anyone else out there find the whole barbarian ad campaign a bit tiring?

More exhausting than that is the amount of pre-approvals this company sends out on a weekly basis! At our household we get on average 3 pre-approved Platinum offers with a whopping starting credit line of a minimum $300. (Only our 4 cats have not received an offer yet) Carrying a Platinum Visa card with a credit line that low hardly seems reasonable in my opinion, considering competitors are regularly sending us true pre-approved offers for at least $3000 starting lines. All these issuers are pulling scores and balance-to-limits ratios from the same sources causing me to ponder Cap One's approval model. So for our purpose of building stronger credit scores, I'd rather leverage the larger lines of credit being reported to the 3 bureaus.

I am not complaining but I too wonder what the market forces are causing Chase and Citi to be more aggressive to attract consumers. Of the offers we have received all are high limit with 0% APR for 12 months making it extremely easy to stay out of service and interest fees hell. This is where I think those commercial bad guys really live.

What are your experiences on these offers? How many flood your mailbox each week. I challenge each of you to leave a comment here with the most outrageous offer!

Key Resources:
Our Card Recommendations
Pre-Approved – What does that really mean?

Ford Motor Goes Sub-Prime? Great Financing Deal!

2006-08-24T21:04:00Z

According to news coming out of Ford, they are relaxing their credit score requirements in order to get more buyers approved. Many people with marginal credit histories will be able to take advantage of the 0% APR for 72 months. What a great chance to help energize your credit building process! For more info see: AutoWeek Article

Sometimes slow sales can be advantageous for consumer!

Offer expires Labor Day

2006 Ford Mustang could be yours with new sub-prime financing rules.

Repairing Credit while using credit the same time!

2006-08-23T00:43:00Z

That sounds like a bad idea! Most of the visitors to our site CreditMania.com are seeking ways to handle old debts and get collectors off their backs. Why in the world would we be recommending opening new credit accounts now? I do get that question quite often and to put it simple my answer is you have to be willing to multi-task. Repair and Build at the same time is a vital strategy for your success. It is my wish that each of you learn how to get your financial house in order and having credit is a major part of the order. Even carrying a $300 limit credit card is better than nothing and in short time will offer a respectable increase in your credit score. NO matter your situation you can up your score by adding good credit while repairing old. You need credit to create a good credit score in today's world. We'll strive to learn how to live life debt free and carry credit for the score. What a great way to live! If you wait building new credit, you'll be waiting longer than needed. I have updated CreditMania.com with a list of over 100 cards to choose from. There are many great choices for those with credit challenges. We recommend Orchard Bank offers.

Finally, It is very important that you give your journey full attention and make sure you are doing something positive in your credit life each day. Hanging out here would be a great start. Share your stories on our forums! Ask me for a clog of your own so that you can journal about your every move. It will all add up to people helping people live life richly!

Remember My 3 Focal Points
Repair & Build Credit
Save Money - Pay Yourself First
Learn to be the best you!

Does your garden grow?

2006-07-25T00:30:00Z

Are you ready for some seeds?

It's time for me to plant some seeds… make you curious. Make you want to know more.

We are not saving enough money. In fact America is almost in a negative net savings tail spin.
Consumer debt is rising faster than the consumer savings. I attribute it all to the marketing of our minds.
We are no longer a society that delays gratification and are relying on credit to quench our thirsts.
By learning to save money the easy way, you'll differentiate yourself from the rest of Americans that have fallen into this spending trap.

Most of us think we need to get totally out of debt before we start saving. This sort of thinking will only delay your building your personal worth! We'll help you identify ways to do both at the same time and be very successful!

Final thought for the day is about home ownership. If you are not a homeowner, you need to be! Sooner than later. The absolutely only unforgivable time that we should be using someone else's money to make a purchase is when we are buying property. Simply put finance what appreciates, never what depreciates. We know that credit score tends to be the gatekeeper in most mortgage applications and YPW has personal affiliations with several mortgage brokers that can get approvals for scores as low as Mid 500's! More on strategies to get into a home sooner than you think.

My promise to you is that working on debt reduction, credit score improvement, increased savings, and homeownership are all achievable! And we'll show you how to get this all started in the same personal-worth-plan!

Are you ready to plant the seeds and get seedlings started? More details in future blog entries.

Own Your Personal Worth!

2006-07-23T19:20:00Z

I have spent years helping others learn how to get the best credit scores that they possibly can. This includes helping others build solid and ethical strategies for managing current and past debts. I have been involved in this effort since 1998 and from experience, I can say there is and will never be an end to the list of those who will need this help.

The mission of helping Americans with repairing and rebuilding of their credit has become quite procedural. Our strategies are tried and tested and best of all they ultimately work. The real issue I see is the predictable repeating of the behavior that has gotten us into the financial difficulties in the first place. Even if we get our credit scores improved and some old debts satisfied, we are most likely to lapse into the behavior that got us down the slippery path before. Unless we make heart felt decisions to make some behavior changes, we are doomed.

This impending doom is why I am very certain each of us need to address our personal worth. I would define personal worth as a being able to live life richly. It starts by having your personal and family financial business in order; every single day. In our world, we can make every aspect of our financial lives automatic! Examples of being automatic are having your pay checks deposited into your bank accounts or having your bills paid by bill pay service. And lastly we all need to live life abundantly! This does not mean living beyond your means by trying to keep up with the Joneses. It merely means that we can all find joy in the lives we have now and should each day take joy in what we do have.

So ultimately it is my goal to show you how you can live life richly. Want to get started? In 30 days you can experience a wonderful change in your life that soon will become the life you were meant to live.

Quick Start Plan

Use CreditMania to help you in the rebuilding and repair process.
You need several positive lines of credit even while repairing. See our list of offers for instant approval. Click Here
Reading assignment: Read Automatic Millionaire by David Bach
Take the Pledge. Joe Tye’s Empowerment Pledge is a great affirmation for you each day.
Remember, we are not just working on money issues; we are also working on you!
Become involved in our Forums and share your progress and questions.

Why a personal worth website?

2006-07-18T01:37:00Z

The Internet is flooded with thousands of websites that deal with credit, debt, and credit repair. My CreditMania is among the mix. It is great that we can take advantage of the world wide web to help get our credit scores improved, but how many of us really take a good honext look at how we ended up searching on the above topics? The reasons are numerous and in many cases very much out of our own control. But in most cases, if we are honest, we do realize that we are the cause of our own misery. My goal is to strike up the motivation in each of you to look deep into yourselves to identify why you are where you are and help you make a decision to not let history repeat itself. :)

I define personal worth as:

Solid Personal and Family Financial Habits
Making your financial life automatic
Everyday is an opportunity to better ourselves

Please stop by frequently to read my and other's blog and forum posts. The possiblities are endless.

Together we'll learn how to live life richly... I promise!

Barry
CreditMania.com

A Personal Worth Community is born...

2006-07-08T20:42:00Z

In 1998 I had a vision that I needed to not only help myself, but help others. I had struggled with many personal finance issues in my life and at that time it seemed like they had all come to a head. If it wasn't rock bottom, I sure don't want to ever end up there!

I was in collections hell and had no real knowledge on how to get out. At the time I was an independent web developer (Under-Paid) and knew there was information out on the Internet that could help me with a plan to get my financial house in order. The only problem I found was that it was all over the place.

There are many experts in select areas of debt, credit, collections, and the rest. But not one single place I could call home for solid and honest help. After months of piecing it all together and implementing what I had learned, I was able to begin the road of financial recovery.

As a result of my frustrations I began helping others out with similar problems as a personal mission to pay my knowledge forward. And in the end I opened a website called CreditMania.com as a place where I could organize what I had learned and share it with the world. That was eight years ago and Creditmania is still going strong! We are helping thousands of people each year by showing them they can take care of their own personal finance issues with nothing more than knowledge, time, and effort.

You might ask, why this Personal Worth site? More on that later...

Thanks for stopping and best of luck on your personal worth journey!

Barry Noret