3 Tactics To Get A Collection Removed From Your Credit Report

I wrote a post awhile back on how to remove late payments from your credit report and it was insanely popular. There are also some great tactics for getting a collection removed that I wanted to share with you.

Get a copy of your current credit report and vigorously verify that all the information is being reported correctly. You should be checking every little piece of data. More than likely, you’ll find a mistake somewhere, and when you do, you can dispute the collection and write a letter to the credit agencies requesting that they remove the collection. Now, this doesn’t mean that they will –they might simply correct the inaccuracy. However, if they can’t verify or obtain the correct data, they might just delete the collection altogether.

You should check the following things:

Account numberBalanceDate openedAccount status (e.g., Closed)Payment status (e.g., Collection)High BalanceCredit LimitAnything else that appears to be inaccurate

I can’t speak from personal experience on this one, but several people have told me they’ve had success contacting the original creditor. Most of the time when a debt goes into collections, the debt is actually sold to the collection agency (or they get some kind of bounty for getting you to pay). However, some creditors have internal collection departments –they are usually under a different company name so you’d never know.

By contacting the original creditor, you will probably need to offer the pay the full amount due to make any headway. Even then, many will simply say, “Sorry, it’s already gone to collections”. However, if the collection agency is actually an internal dept. of the creditor, they may agree to have the collection removed if you pay in full.

Try it and let me know how it works.

It’s no secret that collection agencies can’t be trusted. An article published by Kiplinger entitled, Confessions of a Debt Collector, attests to this. You don’t know what kind of silly fees they are adding to your original balance. Are the fees even legit? Who knows…

Luckily, you have the right to demand that they validate the debt under section 809 of The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. If they can’t validate it, they have to stop contacting you and remove the entry from your credit report. The only downside to this is that you have to request validation within 30 days of their initial contact. Don’t put this off –if you get a collection letter in the mail, sit down and write a short, stern letter stating that you are requesting debt validation. If you don’t hear back from them, you can probably assume they couldn’t fulfill your request.

If you guys have any tactics you’ve been successful with that I didn’t list here, please share! I’m sure other readers would love to hear them.

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3 Surprising Tactics Rich People Use To Grow Their Money

Let’s be honest, most of us daydream about what we would do if we were rich. We imagine doing stuff like quitting our jobs, buying a boat, and spending the rest of our lives sailing around the world. It brings a certain satisfaction dreaming about such things, but is this really how rich people spend their time?

Several years ago a couple of researchers named Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko wondered the same thing. Their curiously led them to spend several years studying the habits of millionaires. Their findings are documented in the book, The Millionaire Next Door.

I highly recommend you check it out if you are at all interested in someday becoming wealthy. You might be surprised to learn that most self-made millionaires are extremely frugal. In fact, out of all the millionaires they profiled, the most wealthy drove the oldest cars and had smaller homes compared to their peers.

Here are some of the most surprising tactics used by millionaires to manage (and grow) their money.

On average, millionaires spend almost 20% of their income on investments. More importantly, these people spent time activity researching their investments. In other words, investing isn’t viewed as simply a retirement plan, but rather, one of the most important drivers of their wealth and future security.

Surprisingly, most millionaires have a budget and consider it important to stick to it. In other words, they have a plan. And in the end, this really does make a huge difference. How many people do you know who actually keep a budget?

The most popular make of car among millionaires is Toyota. In fact, over 80% of luxury cars are purchased by non-millionaires –that is, people trying to create the illusion of wealth.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Are you surprised? Perhaps you have read the book and want to contribute. If so, feel free to leave a comment below.

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