i had not one not two not even three but seven collections on my credit report yes you heard right i said seven collections that's a collection for every day of the week my credit was really bad and i needed to do something fast to get my scores up because i was ready to purchase a house so i got to work and i was able to get all seven of those things removed and i did it all on my own i ended up increasing my credit score by over 100 points and i'm getting ready to tell
you just how i did that and how you can too so don't go nowhere i'll be right back money coming money go i've been at it what's up guys this is monique and welcome back to the channel if you are new here thanks so much for stopping by but don't just be a stranger go ahead hit that subscribe button and join the family because here we go everywhere in life together and all we do is win so we are still on our money series where for every single sunday for the rest of the year we'll
be talking money topics from how to save money how to make money all things youtube and now credit as always i have to let you know i am not a credit repair specialist i am just a person i enrolled into google and youtube university got my degree in learning on my own got my scores up and i'm talking from like the 500s to about 780 and now i'm going to share that journey with you so let's get right into it the first thing i have to let you know before you do anything else is never
claim your debt i'm sure if you ever had anything past due if you've had anything going to collections you've got one of those phone calls that says this is an attempt to collect the debt and any information obtained will be used for that purpose you know what that sounds like to me you have the right to remain silent and anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law so you know what i do i remain silent because if you let them know who you are you are making yourself bound
legally to their debt and then that's harder to work with so when i get those calls i either one don't answer or when i recognize that it is a debt collector i just politely hang up oh when they say massive monique hinton you have the wrong number and i put lightly hang up that phone and go on about my day that pretty much keeps the bowl in your court and we get to decide how we want to proceed at that point so i started this journey off by getting a copy of my credit report from
all three credit bureaus that's transunion experience and equifax that's really important because not all creditors and collection agencies report your debt to every single credit bureau on one of my reports i had only five collections and saying only five sounds crazy i mean that's a lot but anyway i had six on another credit report and then the last one i had all seven of those things so that's why you have to get access to all of your credit reports now i use credit karma i'm sure you have heard about credit karma if you watch any
of my other videos i've said this over and over but credit karma is only good for looking at your reports why because credit karma used the vantage scoring system that's not what your mortgage lenders use credit comment is kind of like a tinder date they never look like what they profile picture look like and you get shocked when you really see the truth now credit coma only has transunion and equifax credit reports i had to get my experian credit report from experian.com so once i got it i made a long long long long list of
all of those collections and on that list i also included the collection agency name their number their address if they had a partial account number like i laid it all out and i put it in order as far as how much i owe from least to greatest so when it came to my collections there are two ways i handled it and the first was i disputed now if you have the time and energy i am going to tell you to never never never pay for a collection dispute dispute dispute now technically you're supposed to dispute
if there are any inaccuracies and honestly there are so many people that have inaccuracies on their credit report but they don't take the time to really look at it scam see what's wrong and it just stays on there for all seven of those years now when i first started out on this journey you know i told you i went to google and did my little research i did not know a lot about what i was doing however i still got it all worked out but i disputed online now before you say no you're not supposed
to i know i know they're saying when you do it online you give up your right to sue all kinds of stuff i didn't know at the time but i know better now so i'm going to tell you the best way to dispute is by letter and there are many dispute letter templates online that you can find but i'm going to go ahead on and tell you everything that you need to put in your letter why because when you are searching for these templates i want to make sure you are choosing the correct template and
if you are enjoying this video so far go ahead on and give it a thumbs up like it for me because it really helps me out and you help me i help you this is a good relationship we got going all right so the things that you want to make sure to include in your letter is your full name and address the credit bureau's name and information you want to include the collection agency name next to the item that you are disputing you also want to include the partial account number if there is one there
if not don't worry and you also want to include while you're disputing this does not belong to me i do not have a contract with this company this is inaccurate and if you choose that why you feel is inaccurate just make sure you put why you are disputing and one of the most important things you want to put on there is what you want them to do about it basically please remove this thank you and a couple of more things i want to let you know about the dispute process is that it is suggested you
do not dispute more than five items in a 30-day period why because if you go ahead and dispute a whole lot of things they'll mark you as frivolous and frivolous is a title you do not want for yourself okay so when i did my research i went to experian i found a dispute letter template on experience website so that's a good place to kind of look and see how they formatted everything too i'll still type it up myself because it's like a form that you have to check and fill in and this and that so
that's a good source to make sure you're getting all the information that they're looking for but anyway so on that form there's only a space for four items to dispute so i feel like you know hey experience trying to tell me something they trying to help me out so i'm like okay experian i hate i'll definitely only do four so make sure you do not do more than four to five okay guys and another question that a lot of people ask is do i have to write a letter for each of the things that i'm
disputing and no you do not you can put all four or five of those items in that one letter just make sure you list them all separately what you're disputing the name all of those things i told you to put and that's it now also make sure you're disputing all four or five of those collections with each of the credit bureaus because if you only do it with one it'll only be removed from one it does not cross over there is no connection none of that so once you've drafted your letter you print it out
you put it in that envelope getting ready to send it make sure you mail it certified mail you need receipt of you sending it that is your evidence in case anything happens once they receive that letter they have about 30 days to respond to that if they do not that is a win for you the burden of proof is on them that means they basically have to prove whatever you're disputing for so you just sit back and you wait now i honestly didn't know all of this when i first started out so i ended up
disputing online i made an account with each of the online credit bureaus this again experience transunion and equifax and i just submitted my dispute that way i ended up only getting one of my collections removed that way and a lot of times they say that when you do it online they have like automated response systems it just does not work the same as by writing a letter so that was my fault but i have learned my lesson and i'm trying to make sure you don't make the same mistake so at this point i was left
with those six ugly collections on my credit report and i needed them removed fast i did not want to have to wait another 30 days to do all of that again so at this point i decided to settle with the collection agency i know wait a minute wait a minute don't crucify me don't stone me to death there are some instances where you just you know some people have to just decide to settle and that's okay if that's if you are one of those people now if you decide you need to go this route let
me tell you how i did it so first and foremost in case you don't know collection agencies purchase your debt off of these creditors at pennies on a dollar so if you have like a thousand dollar debt they may have bought it for a hundred dollars or so so this is why if you decide to go this route you should never pay full price because they didn't pay you can settle that debt and honestly they're gonna you know put on a hard face like they want all of the money but they'll be happy to get
anything they can some people have settled for like 30 to 40 percent i believe that's a good range i settled for 40 for most of them one of them i think i had to do 60 and one of the people was just doing the most and made me have to settle with 80 when i made me because you can decide look hey i'm not gonna do it because you can play hardball too they need you just as much as you need them but the one i paid 80 was only like a hundred dollar collection so
i wasn't too concerned with that now there are a few things that i want you to know if you're going to go this route and the first is never settle unless they agree to delete it if they do not delete it and you just settle and you pay it it's basically going to mark that collection as paid and you wouldn't see no movement in that credit score now sometimes these collection agencies come up with these lies about oh i can't do it i can't do it believe me they can and also a question i see
a lot is people ask well i didn't ask for the deletion is it too late now you can always call and ask for like a good will deletion at that point if you've already paid and didn't ask for it sometimes they'll work with you but at this point they may not do it for you but maybe you can still try to dispute it for some reason and just get it removed i mean some you gotta you have to experiment sometimes i mean there's no harm in trying they can't do anything any worse to you now
when you ask for a deletion make sure you also request a deletion letter and yes you should get it before you make a payment i didn't do it that way i looked up by the grace of god they sent it to me right after i paid but i suggest that you get it before because sometimes people not gonna you know stick to their word and unless it's in black and white it didn't happen and some people even when they try to settle they prefer not to even call they'll write a letter and that's too to
keep a paper trail for what they're trying to do and the last thing i want to mention about that is you still do not have to clean that debt even though you are calling them on the phone what i basically told them was i was looking at my credit report i discovered that they had a collection for me that i am unaware of i've never seen before but i don't have the time to really get into that so i'm just trying to see about settling it just in case things went out and i'm going to
speak and they try to pull up a record and i say play the whole recording because i said i don't know nothing about it now some people might not tell you either when it comes to this this is why i want to just lay it all out there for y'all so y'all can know everything so you can make the best decision for you when you call if you make a payment any kind of payment plan sometimes they'll set those up if you ask for a deletion letter they may not do that but in case you
do make a payment plan and you make any kind of payment have any kind of activity toward that collection it's going to reset your statue of limitation you know how in seven years it'll fall off your credit report well if you make a payment today then that seven years gonna start from today so you want to be very very careful with that make sure something you are actually going to pay in full because you don't want to have to deal with all of that if you know you stop paying so that is basically how i
got all seven collections removed from my credit report again the best way to do that is disputing by letter i know i'm telling you this now so i hope that you enjoyed this video don't forget to like it for me if you have not subscribed already what are you waiting for what are you waiting for go ahead hit that subscribe button and join the family other than that that's all i have for you beautiful people out there thanks so much for watching and until next time we are out peace [Music]
