What's on your credit report, and is Rover worth your time

0:00Today is Wednesday, September 16th. We are going to talk about a side hustle corner, which is boarding dogs on rover. It sounds like the perfect side hustle. You like dogs, you're home anyway. But then we're going to take a look at what that number is really mean and what the platform cuts. And then the tax that nobody with holds for you and see what's actually left it for hand. And then we're going to do a breakdown of a credit report. So if you haven't grabbed your credit report yet, please go and do that. We're going to go through every single thing lined by line, everything that's personal, that's blocked out. And it's not going to be a lecture about it, but we're going to understand what a credit report is. Plus we're going to have three headlines today. We're going to talk about CDs or certificate of deposits, a car payment that might be quietly lowering your tax bill and a price on your screen that may not be the price anybody else is seeing. And then one document almost nobody has ever actually read.

1:01Welcome to becoming financially confident, where we are breaking free from money shame one conversation at a time. We are live every Monday through Friday from 11 30 AM to 12 30 PM Eastern. I'm Ralphie step junior. I'm a licensed public accountant and I'm the one with 30 years of experience. And I'm Julian. I'm just a regular person asking all of the questions. Yeah, because you might have those questions too, because Julian and I are very different people. And we're going to talk about on this show things that affect our money and your money. Now we have two house rules that we all agreed to live by. And that's no shame in anybody about money. And nobody's ever going to be judge on this show for what they did. No, our goal every day is to inform you and to equip you so you can make better decisions with your money and actually get to a point of actually becoming financially confident. If you have something you want us to talk on the show about, send it to us at becomingfinancialicompetent.com.

2:06No personal finance question is off limits. Yeah, we got some questions in the last few days and we're doing a lot more of those this Friday. So wherever you are on your financial journey, I want you to know right here and right now we've all been there. You're not alone on this journey and we're here to walk that journey with you every single day on the show. First, we are going to talk about CDs or certificate of deposits. If you have one when that CD matures, it rolls into a brand new full term automatically at whatever rate the bank is posting that day. And this is specifically what we're going to talk about. You actually have a grace period to change your mind. I don't want that CD and at that big banks, that window is 10 calendar days. Meanwhile, the national average savings account in this country is at 0.38%. So Ralph, first talk to us like, what is this 0.38% and what am I comparing that to before we get into the CD of it all? Yeah, so here's what we're talking about. If you just leave your money parked in a standard

3:06savings account that every normal bank has, the average right now is paying 0.38%. So one third of a percent of interest. So that's why so many people are investing in CDs, certificates of deposit, where you get a higher return. But we've talked about this on the show before you're locking your money in for a certain period of time. Here specifically what this headline is really talking about. At some point, that CD matures. So let's use a simple example. Let's say you go out and you buy a thousand dollar CD that's six months and they give you an interest rate of 4%. When you purchase that CD, most banks will give you a little toggle where you decide when this CD matures what happens next. Basically, there's two defaults. Default number one is they deposit that money back into your traditional savings account. So if you're getting 4% and they do that, then you're going back to 0.38%. Not a great deal. Right. The other option is a lot of banks will allow you to renew that CD

4:11in the same duration as what you have now. But here's the catch to that. You're going to renew it at whatever the interest rate is currently. So if you got that 4% interest rate and then six months later, the interest rate dropped, you're going to renew at a lower interest rate. And the thing is, there's only 10 days to make this change or you can get it with a penalty for taking that money back out. And you're saying it's 10 days after it has renewed? Yes. 10 calendar days most banks will honor that. Got it. And this one actually bit me a little bit. I do some investing with CDs and I wasn't paying attention. I had bought a 12 month CD and it got into the middle of tax season when this thing renewed and I wasn't paying attention and the renewal rate was actually a quarter point less than what I had before. But if I had taken that 12 month CD and bought an 18 month CD, I could have actually got a better rate. So here's what I'm encouraging everybody to do tonight. Find your last bank statement and look for the maturity dates. If you don't

5:15have CDs, you can ignore this, but it's printed right on there. Put that date in your phone with a reminder set 14 days before and then call the bank before matures and say exactly this. Here's what I want you to say. I want to know my maturity date and my grace period and I don't want this to alter renew. Okay. You don't have a CD at all. Do the two minute version instead and log into your savings account and find the actual yield that it's paying you right now because a lot of people have never looked at that number. And like I said, if it's only paying you 0.38%, we've talked on this show before. Maybe it's time to think about a high yield savings account. Maybe it's time to think about going into a CD. Those are all better decisions and letting that money to sit there and have nothing trickling in. Sounds good. If you bought a new car in the last year and a half and you're making payments on it, there's a deduction sitting there that did not exist before. This is important. The interest on

6:15the loan up to $10,000 a year for tax years 2025 through 2028. And here's the part that matters to most people. You do not have to itemize to take it. But there are conditions and one of them is strange. The car has to have had its final assembly in the United States and the badge on the back of the car does not tell you that Ralph, who actually gets this one and who's going to think they do and be wrong about it. Yeah. So this is an interesting one and going through taxis in last year, a lot of people were not aware of this. Here's basically what this means. If you went out and bought a new car in 2025, 2026, 2027 or 2028 and you got a loan for that car and it was final assembly in the United States. You have the ability to take a tax deduction for the interest that you paid on that vehicle in the current year. So first thing comes to mind. If you weren't aware of this and you bought a new vehicle in 2025 and you paid interest on it and it had its final assembly

7:20in the United States and I'll talk in a minute about how to find that out. You may want to go back and amend your tax return because what that does is it reduces your taxable income. If you reduce your taxable income, you're going to reduce your tax, which is a very good thing. But remember, there's three conditions. It has to be a new car to you. You have to have secured the car by a loan and it has to have that American badge on it. It has to basically be made in America. A lot of people miss this one and you can still go back in a man's or tax return and get some money back. So that's one thing you can do. So two things this week and together they're going to take about 10 minutes. Number one, find your VIN number, your vehicle identification number. It's on the driver's side dashboard through the windshield. It has that little thing that looks like old school text. They go to the sticker in the door jam or your insurance cart. Once you have that VIN number, you can go through the NHTSA VIN decoder. That's a free government site and it's where the specific car had its final assembly because that's the first thing you need

8:23to know. Was this car assembled in the United States? If you've got a car that wasn't, unfortunately, this doesn't work for you. Second step. So once you clear that hurdle and yes, I bought the new car in 2025 or 2026 now. Second hurdle, then you log into your auto lender's website and find the interest that you paid this year. Not the total amount of payments, just the interest only. I will tell you, I have a Toyota truck and I was shocked. The Toyota truck. I did. Well, I did actually trade it in a couple months ago. But actually, it was assembled in the United States. So even though it is a quote, foreign car, it was assembled in the United States. So I qualified for this and this lender, Toyota Finance actually was really proactive. And they actually sent me an email that said, here is your interest statement for last year. But not all the lenders did that. Not all lenders are as big as Toyota. It could be a local bank or something like that. So go figure out what this is. And if you didn't take this deduction, reach out,

9:25get an amended tax return. If you want to contact me directly, we do tax returns for people all over the United States. But this is a big deal because it could be up to $10,000 a year per tax return. Now I'm going to tell you, there's some fine print here. There are some phase outs based on income. If you're single, basically if you make more than $100,000, you don't qualify. If you're filing with somebody else, it's $200,000. The loan has to originate in these tax years. And all of those type of things like the big thing here, though, final assembly in the United States by using that decoder. Like you got to get your decoder ring out and say, was this car actually designed? But this is something that a lot of people miss. And if you paid this, why not get the benefit of the tax deduction? Yeah, this is good to know. And I think Ralph, you did such a great job of saying these are the biggest, most important qualifications. And then, you know, if you have further questions, definitely reach out. Absolutely. The next one sounds like a conspiracy theory until you see who is saying it. The FTC has a

10:29proposed enforcement policy out right now on what it calls personalized pricing. A company can be using your personal data to set a price based on what it thinks you specifically are willing to spend. And the FTC's position is that if a business implies a price is the same for everybody when it actually varies by individual, that can be deceptive. Ralph, if the number on my screen isn't the number on somebody else's screen, what am I supposed to do with that? I'm already not happy about this because I've heard about about this before. Yeah, this one I mentioned to Julia before we did the show, and she's like, Oh, I don't like that one. Yeah. And I get it happen too. No, I get it. Yeah. And the thing is the price. It's not the price. It's not knowing about this. And see, this all comes down to your device. It comes down to your location. It comes down to your history. How many times you've looked at a particular thing? So it's really a way for these data aggregators. I know that's a big word. There are a whole bunch of people out there now that are aggregating data. They're looking at what you look at on YouTube. They're looking at where you go

11:32on the internet. They're looking at what stores you shop in. And they're actually building pricing profiles and customer avatars based on that. And basically, we used to call it size enough people. That's effectively what they're doing is they're sizing you up to see the maximum return they can get. Now, as a business person, that says to me, great, they're doing their homework, they're paying attention to details, they're looking at because this can work both ways. They also can present you with discounts as well because maybe you're that person that keeps on looking at the same thing, but you're not pulling the trigger. Then all of a sudden, they say, well, Julia, it's been to this website. Let's give her a 5% discount. So this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's definitely from the Federal Trade Commission. It's a thing of not being fair across the board. Now, Julia, just gave me the Julia, I think, yeah, the Julia face. I disagree. I disagree because I think a lot, this is such an easy way for a lot of these companies to just like pick on you. And also, by the way,

12:35my perspective is if a company is willing to collect all of the data and give you personalized pricing, I don't think those companies are going to be gracious enough to give you a discount. That truly matters. That could be. So here's what I'm going to encourage everybody to do. Before your next order, over $100, I want you to run a 60 second version. I want you to price it the way you normally would. So go into the normal website and price it up. Then what I want you to do is play a little game with them. I want you to open up a private or incognito window and price the exact same thing again. And if you can, check in. Make sure it's on a different device. What am I talking about there? So with most of the web browsers, you can go in there and kind of spoof who you are. In Google, I know there's open and incognito window, which that basically means is, I'm not sure, it's 100% true, but it is supposed to not load in all of the things that it knows about you. This is a great way to see if what is happening in that particular purchase is happening to you.

13:35If you can do it in another geographic region, like this is something that Juliet and I might try, because Juliet is California. I'm Delaware. I know this actually is a thing and I'll tell you how I know this. My oldest son just moved to New York. And he bought his washer and dryer for his apartment while he was in Texas. Okay. So he went to the same home depot in New York because he needed a hose for it. Guess what, Juliet? That same washer and dryer in New York was $300 more. Well, in New York versus Texas. Now, some of that, again, that's not exactly we're talking about here, but if you do this online, you can see that there are some differences. So this is going to be, it's on the, the, the, the, the, the docket for the FTC. They're going to have a meeting on September 25th. So if you want to comment about this, you can go out to regulations.gov. This is actually FTC 2026-1057 where you can make your comment. So if you feel strongly about it, and I think Juliet might

14:39feel strongly about it, then you should go out there and do that because the whole reason that the FTC exists is to protect the consumer. And if you don't say anything, this is just going to continue. If you strongly oppose it, then go make your voices loud. I think it's a great thing to do. Yes, I'm actually going to start doing that. So Juliet is going to stake out the FTC website, and she is going to become a thorn in their side, I think. All for consumer protection, you know? There's nothing wrong with being, but, but at the end of the day, go check it out. Open up that Cognitive Window, call somebody you know and say, Hey, can you look up the price on this and see what they get because then you might find, Oh, this is a real thing. Yeah. All right. Well, there's an envelope on your desk right now. Maybe there is. Maybe there isn't. But you know exactly what it is. And for so many of us, it's been sitting there for 11 days. It's not urgent enough to make a special trip to the post office, but it's not optional either. And that's why you haven't thrown

15:40it away. So it just sits there. One of the things that we like to talk about is stamps.com because it puts real postage on it from your own printer and the carrier comes to your door to get it. No trip, no standing in line. And here's the best part of our relationship with stamps.com. They give you 30 days for free. Then plan started at 1499 a month. If you want to find out more information, go to becomingfinanciallyconfident.com slash stamps. Again, that's becomingfinanciallyconfident.com slash stamps. We are getting into today's side hustle. So we're talking about Rover. Has anybody in the comment section? Have you guys ever used Rover or maybe as a customer or you've been working on Rover? That's what we're going to talk about. It's a side hustle that people constantly bring up because it sounds like when that's really fun and when that you can't lose, you like dogs, your home. So this is essentially free money rights, boarding dogs and pet sitting on Rover. So Ralph, let's talk about, let's kind of

16:46do a breakdown like for people who don't have dogs or maybe wants to. Like what is Rover? How does the platform really work? And then let's get into the money of it. So you actually know somebody who used Rover several times. It's a great service if you're going out of town and you've got one of those dogs that doesn't fare well in a kennel, doesn't do well on their own. Basically, there's two ways to do Rover. Either the person comes to your house a couple times a day and checks on your pet, maybe takes them for a walk, make sure they get fed and all that sort of thing. Or the other way is you actually take the pet to your home and you and basically your house becomes the workplace. But there's a couple of pitfalls here that we need to talk about. Number one thing, and I'm not picking on Rover because they're not the only ones to do this. They take 20% of whatever the generated income is from the top. So it comes off the top. And then you have to understand you also have to pay tax on this. So we'll talk about who this works for and who it doesn't work for. So the typical

17:47boarding, let's get into some real numbers because I did some research for today's show. 2026 rate surveys show that the typical boarding is between $40 and $75 a night. A night, okay. Yeah. So basically the way that it works with Rover is you're going to get 80% of that. So if you get $50 a night, right away, you're only getting $40 a night because Rover's going to keep $10 bucks or that. But because I'm the tax accountant in the room, don't forget about self-employment tax. You are self-employed. You're not an employee of Rover. You're an independent contractor. Is that the 1099? Correct. So for every whether you get a 1099 or not, we've talked about that before, you have to report this income. That rate is 15.3%. So if we start at $40, now we're down to $34 because Uncle Sam takes self-employment tax of six. In addition to that, now you've got to pay

18:49your regular federal income tax. And we'll just use an assumption that you're in a 12% tax bracket. So that $50 a night, as you saw when you saw the advertisements, you know, do this on Rover and you can make $50 a night. I just showed you the math. Now we're down to 30 nights. So you need $30 a night. Let me make sure I got that right. So let's say you get $50 a night on the top Rover the platform takes 20%. So now you're at $40. And then on top of that, you have to do self-employment tax and then your federal and state tax still with from that 40, right? Yeah, correct. And I didn't even factor in a state income tax. I'm just saying the federal tax and the self-employment tax. And that's, let's put you down to $30. So it's not that you're, because a lot of people do the math and they say, oh, this is great. For 10 nights, I can watch this dog. I'm going to make 500 bucks. But that's not true. You're going to make, you're going to keep $300. But here's the part you also have to think about. What are the supplies you're going to need? What are the utility costs? What is the mileage going back and forth?

19:52Right. So the real answer in my perception is a little less than $30 for each night. Do you know? Because I don't have a pet and I don't use, so I don't use Rover, obviously. But do you know if like the supplies being said, are they, is that offered by the person who needs to have their dogs and their pets watching? So my wife and I've actually used this service. We have a German shepherd, her name is Piper. And Piper does not leak, like to go home. She loves her home here on the farm. So she is not a dog that we can go board. So when we've taken overnight trips before when my, my youngest son wasn't able to do it. Because a lot of times Rover is my youngest son. And after work, he comes and he becomes Rover for us. And you know, we throw him a couple bucks and he's happy. But what this, this is a great service. But so we use the service and we provided the food because if you know, much about dogs, dogs are consistent. They want to have the same food. So most of the time, I'm talking about supplies. If you're taking a dog to your home and you've got to get like we we pads so they don't peel over your carpet. Or you've

20:56got to get dog toys or something like that to keep them occupied. So they're not tearing up your, your floors are eating through your doors. Because sometimes dogs would like to do that. But there's a couple of things that I think my big takeaways here. Before you get into this, right, you're nightly rate and get those numbers down to what we talked about. That's the first thing. The second thing you want to understand is if you're going to be doing it at your place, you've got to make sure that your landlord or your HOA or your homeowners are aware of this and it's something you can do there. And a lot of people don't think about this. Understand whether that homeowner's insurance or your renters insurance covers this because here's a thing. Or if they bite somebody or if they cause injury because what I have found is most homeowners policies specifically exclude boarding other people's animals for money. So it's not covered. So just think about this. Let's say

21:57that you're boarding this dog and your neighbor is waving at you. Hey, it's great day over here and your dog becomes like KUJU. And this dog you're boarding jumps through the fence and bite your neighbor. Unfortunately, most insurance carriers aren't going to cover that. So that's a big deal because for two reasons. Number one, they don't cover boarded animals and most personal insurance policies don't cover business activity. So you want to get both of those answers before you dog this. You don't or before you do this. I say before you dog this, I feel like I need to start barking here. You want to do this before you do it, not after the first bite because once the first bite is done, you're in trouble. And the thing I know about dogs, we're getting my oldest son has a dog firefly. I think I mentioned this yesterday. And fireflies actually coming for a weekend visit. Well, firefly is very sensitive about food. So we need to separate these two dogs when they're being fed because it will be like game on. If you put other dog like we actually had this

22:59happened the last time that firefly and piper were together, they got in a little bit of a tussle as my grandmother would say, they was a tussle. So just understand that kind of happens. So understand what you're getting into, understand what overnight really means. And you know, the whole point of this side hustle corner is to really go beyond the simple, here's what rovers telling we we can make. What are you actually going to keep? Because you got a factor that in, like we talked about, Juliet said the 1099, you might not get one because you might not do 20,000 dollars worth of rover, but you still have to claim that income. A lot of cities, if you have a home occupation, you've got to have a permit or you've got to have a boarding license. Don't guess on that because again, you might be making 50 bucks or 30 bucks a night. And next thing, you know, not get the door. The city inspectors there and you get fined more than you've ever made on rover or you skip the insurance. That's a big deal. Understand if your age will allow it. If you're

24:00renting space, does your landlord allow it? All these things are pretest. I'm not saying rovers not a good deal because it very well can be. It really can be. Um, it for secret in the comments said usually in rover, the supplies are on the pet owner. That makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. So, and thank you for the common. If you were a side hustler, Ralph, would you do rover? I think, and you put me on the spot there, but I love it because so I'm a pet person. So for me, yes, but for me, I would not do it in my own home because I already have a pet and I know the two of them probably wouldn't get along. So I think to answer this question, I've got to think about a couple things. Am I doing it at their home? So therefore, the risk of any kind of exposure is limited. Second thing, if I'm only going to be making about half of the night, does that really make sense? Because if you're going to have to spend eight hours doing something, is eight hours of your time worth $30. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the bigger question because then we're getting down

25:03to like two or three dollars an hour. Now, if it's passive income and you're just going to sit there and say, Oh, cute little dog, go sit in the corner. That maybe that's okay. Yeah, yeah. So for me, I think I would also be a yes with a lot of caveats. I would not want to bring the dog into my space because I don't know, it's my space. I don't want a dog in there, but I'm very happy to go over and walk the dog or like, how sit or something. And then the way that I see it is, it is passive income. And if there's like a dog that's active and wants to go out and play, then it also gets me outdoors. Yeah. And that's why I see a lot of, I'll say recently retired people. I've got some kinds that are starting to do this and they love it because it's socialization. A lot of them aren't doing the overnight boarding. They're doing well, I'll go check on your dog twice a day. And they really enjoy it because it gives them something to do. They're pet people anyway. So actually, this is one of those side houses. I'll give the check mark to that says, this is one I kind of like, but understand what you're getting into, understand the ramifications of insurance and your house and all that sort of

26:05thing because you want to be intentional and you want to be clear and equipped about what you're getting into. That's the whole point of the show. Yes, exactly. Well, here's something that's interesting. 70% of people don't have a will. 70% of people watching or listening right now don't have a will. And it's not because you decided against it. You just never got around to doing it. But there's a cost in that. There's a cost in not doing this. The cost can be probate court. And then a judge, it's never met your family decides who gets what and your family just sit there going what's going to happen next. Well, easy will and trust handles that very issue online in one sitting for $149. You will get a will that's attorney reviewed and it's built for your state's laws. If you're interested in finding out more about easy will go to becoming financially confident. .com slash easy will again, that's becoming financially confident.com slash easy will and don't be one of the 70% that just waits to see what happens when you pass away because all of us have

27:08a date with that. Make sure your affairs are in order again, becoming financially confident.com slash easy will. I know we're getting into the next section, but I just want to say in forseeker came with another comment. In forseeker said, I think the best way to pet sit is at the pet's home. It makes the pets more comfortable, which is super important. So you don't get them in the agitated state of mind. And you can set a distance to help determine travel. Yes, these are all really great things to point out as well. Yeah, well said. And thank you for commenting. And before we jump into the next topic, I want to point everybody to a document that we've created in preparation for today, we put together a credit report document and the easiest way to get it if you go to becoming financially confident.com slash credit. And you could do that right now. It's going to ask for your email address. It's going to send you a confirmation. And then you'll get a beautiful PDF document that walks you through all the things we're going to talk about today. So again, that's becoming financially confident.com slash credit. So

28:12download your guide today. But go ahead, Julia. Let's get into today's topic. Yeah. So at the top of the show, we said we asked if everybody pulled their credit report. Hopefully you all had some time to pull it. I just pulled mine. Today's document is the one document that everybody has, but almost nobody has read. I am guilty of that. I know about the credit report. Never read it before. It's the report your score is built out of. I have a real one right in front of me with personal details blacked out. And I'm going to we're going to read it to you. You don't need to be looking at anything else, except for what is yours. And you actually don't need to write anything down. But at the end, Ralph is going to give you three things to do tonight. So Ralph, let's start at the very top. Yeah, before we even do that, I want to talk for a second about why people won't open it. So if you haven't even pulled your credit report, I'm going to encourage you. It may be ugly. I get that. I've been there. I've been the person with the credit score that's like, wow, that's a credit score. Didn't know it could get that low.

29:14But if you don't know, you're never going to fix it. You're never going to change it. And there could very well be things on your credit report that aren't correct. So that's you got to get past that feeling. This is one of those tough love segments, but go to annual credit report.com or go to each of the credit bureaus and pull that. So we're going to make an assumption. You've done that. There are basically seven parts of every credit report. And I'm going to break those down piece by piece. The first thing is your personal information on your credit report. It's going to talk about who you are. It's going to have your information on there. It's going to have your addresses. It's going to have any, yeah, any names that you've used. So if you've changed names, if you've been married or divorced, all of those things are going to be it's going to have a thing called aliases. And and aliases look like this is a really interesting thing. So just picture this. All on us. Yeah, my name is Ralph Eastep Jr. It's actually Ralph Victor Eastep Jr. But sometimes when I apply for credit,

30:15I might put Ralph Eastep or I might put Ralph V Eastep or I might put Ralph V Eastep Jr. All of those are aliases. So when they're not aliases like in a in a nefarious way, but there are different ways that I've applied for credit. This is super important because look at this section of your credit report and make sure there aren't names in there that make no sense to you. One of the easiest things I'm good. Yeah, I was just going to say like even before. So I pulled my credit report from experience on and it's 24 pages. And then but then even before we get to that personal, there's like an ad a glance view that I see. And then and then I get to the personal. So exactly what what Ralph is saying. Yeah, Joy, and if you have questions while we're going through this, please shoot them out to me. I am very skilled at reading credit reports. I've been known this for many years. And I want everybody to really lean into understanding what that is. But what I was getting to is if you see an aliase on that and that name makes no sense to you, radar should go up because that means likelihood someone has tried to apply for credit in your name.

31:20So if you see a name that is completely unknown to you, let's just say Juliet. If Juliet sees Juliet Jones and Juliet Jones was her maiden name or a different name that she's aware of, that's fine. But if on her credit, she sees Sally Smith, I would be like, wait a minute. So Sally Smith may have tried to get credit in her name. So look at this section. Look at the addresses as well, because you this can be a tell as well. Make sure those addresses are addresses that make sense to you. I have a question for you because you said you sometimes will go by Ralph V. Step, right? Like is the is the V part of legal? Like it. So my legal is it's have to be legal. Yeah, not necessarily because I also you're going to his some kind of funny. Like sometimes when I sign up for something, I will use a fake name intentionally. And what's interesting is sometimes I will see those quote fake names pop up on my credit report because they do what's called a soft pool. It's a

32:24soft pool. Yeah, which is a difference between a hard pool and a soft pool. I don't want to get into that discussion, but soft pools don't affect your credit score. Hard pools do. Well, wait, so soft pool. Okay, we don't have to get into the whole thing about soft pool and hard pool. But whenever you do something and it pulls your credit, is it are they supposed to tell you, oh, this is going to be a soft pool or not? Yes, but let me explain the difference between the two. If I am a company, I can go out and contract with one of the credit reporting agencies. And I could say, give me every single person who fits a particular set of parameters. They have a credit score of this. They live in this geographic region. They have this many open trade lines, this many accounts. That's what's called a soft pool. And the credit bureaus will sell that information to people. They're not, they're, they're giving you numbers. They're not, they're not giving you individual pieces. They're saying, here's the people that you could market to. That's what we're talking about. That's a soft pool that doesn't affect your credit score. A hard pool is you go to the car dealership.

33:29You get in front of the finance guy and he says, okay, Juliet, I need you to fill out this credit application. You're going to sign something that says that you agree to having your credit pool. That's a hard pool. That is going to affect your credit score. Got it. All right. Let's, I think we can move on to the next section, which is personal statements. Yeah. So this one, this one always confuses people. But this is a place where you can actually add a personal narrative to your credit report. And a lot of people aren't aware of this. For example, let's say that you've been the victim of identity theft. You can actually put a statement on your credit report. I am aware that I was a victim of identity theft. And this account, this account, this account are not my accounts. I'm in the process of working through these now to get those off. That's the kind of thing you can put on there. You can put credit freezes on there. You can put all of the fraud alerts on there. That's a great thing to use. It's absolutely free. And it's basically a narrative for anybody that does a hard pool on your credit report. How can somebody update their personal statement?

34:35You go right to the credit bureau's website. And there's a place to make all of these modifications. Got it. Okay. So then like, let's say you had somebody break in your house and you don't know if you were the victim of an identity left. Is that something you think could go on a personal statement? Oh, absolutely. And I think that a credit report is a great way to determine if you've been the victim of identity theft for a couple reasons. Number one, if there's a crazy name on there that doesn't make sense to you, if there is an address that doesn't make sense to you, if there are, we'll get to this in a little bit, if there are inquiries. And that's a little bit farther down on the report. These are all things that can, that give us sort of a foreshadowing is there might be something on this. So this is one of those things. A credit report is a great way to pay attention to what's going on. And that's why I'm a huge believer in at the very least pulling your credit reports once a year, each bureau, and reading that thing from top to bottom, like you got, like you're taking a test on it because there are so many. Or reading book.

35:36No, like reading a book. It's really important that you do that because you want to understand what's going on. And again, the three bureaus are Equifax, Experian, and TransUnia. Now, each of these reports might look a little different. Each of them have their own nuance ways of doing it. But the general information is the same. But if you've got an address on there, you've never lived that. That's a big deal. Pay attention to that because that means someone, either someone's file is bleeding into yours or somebody is trying to scam you or take advantage of your credit. Let's move on to the next section, which is potentially negative items. I am happy to say the fourth that I'm looking at. Nothing there, I think, unless I scroll down and like, snuck on a different order. But walk us through this potentially negative item. And that's what you want to see. So in the potentially negative items, that's where it would be things like if you've ever been late on a payment, they'll put it in that. If you have a charge off, in other words, we talked about that on yesterday's show. If you haven't paid alone, if you have medical collections,

36:38anything like that will be in that section. And the whole point of that is from two perspectives. From the consumer perspective, so you can see, oh, here's the things that got to pay attention to. It's also great from the lender's perspective. Because when I would look at credit reports, I would look at the credit score and then I get right into the potentially negative things. Because if I'm busy during the day and I've got a ton of loans to go through, I'm going to go key in on those things first. So that I can say, oh, this person isn't going to work with what we're trying to accomplish. But it works for both the consumer and the lender. So that's why it's so important. Those potentially negative items, if you have any of those things, pay attention to those things, do some research on those things and you may need to dispute some of those things if they're not yours. I just want to clarify here because like, let's say you have a mortgage for 30 years and you're like on your five, the remaining mortgage does not live there, right? No, if it wouldn't be... No, so if you have, we're going to get to that in a few minutes when we talk about a

37:41council in good standing, which is actually the next place we're going to go to. But this is a place where there's any public records. If you've ever had a bankruptcy, if you've ever had a judgment against you, meaning someone has gone to court and said, Julia didn't pay her bills. And now this court has said, nope, Julia doesn't pay her bills. If you have a tax lien from the IRS or from the state, all of these things are like, think about it like the headline. This is the headline to your credit report. It starts over the who you are, where you live, and then it goes right into... Here's the headlines. Yeah, big, you know, danger will roger. You know, pay attention. These are the things that are important. Got it, got it. Okay, so you mentioned a council in good standing. Let's head there. But before we go there, let me mention one more thing, a couple more things. Okay. If you have a bankruptcy, most negative information last on your credit report for 10 years. So if you've got a bankruptcy, get buckle up. It's going to be on your credit report from anywhere from within seven and 10 years, because the lender wants to know about that. Generally, medical

38:44collections are removed. Like we talked about last week under $500 or under 12 months or not reported. That's not a law. That's an individual credit report responsibility. But let's get into the accounts. So the next section is actually the actual... What we would call trade lines. And what that basically means is that here are the accounts that the credit report shows that you're connected with. Trade lines, like, is it the whole point like trade? Like, you're going to trade. Well, no, not exactly. What it mean by that is a separate account. So if you had a mortgage, if you had a mortgage, you would see the mortgage company's name. You would see the original acquisition cost of whatever you originally borrowed. You'd see a number of the last 24 payments to see if you've been making those on time. It'll show the current amount do. It'll show the monthly payment. It'll show if you've ever been passed due on it. Those are the things. Go ahead. So I see on my report, like, the graph that you mentioned, it's essentially like a table

39:47and on the left hand side, it's all the years. And then on the top row, it's the months of the year. And then I just see a lot of check marks and dashes. Yeah, so... Quick words are good. Dashes, I don't. I'm like... Dashes just means you might not have a payment to do that month. So let's say you have a credit card reporting on that trade line. Yeah. If you didn't have a balance that month, it could very well be a dash. A dash. If you had a check mark, that means you paid it on time. As a lender, I'm looking at the thing does Juliet pay her bill on time. Right. So each trade line is going to give you the name on the account. It's going to give you the address on the account. It's going to give you the phone number. It's going to give you the account number. It's going to tell you... I'm surprised. Yeah, I'm telling you, this is a wealth of information. It's going to give you what type of card it is. It's going to give you the recent balance. It's going to tell you the absolute credit limit. It's going to tell you the highest balance you've ever had. If your pass do, it's going to tell you how much your pass do. These are great things. It also mentions one thing a lot of people

40:48don't think about. Whether anybody else is a co-signer or aligned with this account. So let's say for example... Not a bit of fishery, but like a... Not a bit of fishery. We're talking... Yes. A joint account, right? Correct. A joint account. So let's just say you went through a divorce. Look at your credit report and see are there items, loans, credit cards that are still showing as joint because you may not have a personal connection to that person anymore, but they're still connected to your credit report. So pay attention to that. This is the most important part of the credit report. You need to look and make sure that every single account makes sense. Yeah. And this part... It takes the bulk of my 24-page credit report. Which does that sound right to you? Absolutely. And it should because... And this will report every piece of credit you've ever had. So even if you have paid something off, let's just say you used to have a car loan and that's paid off. You should find that in the history. Let's say that you had a mortgage and you sold that house

41:52and that mortgage was paid off. If you have a credit card, it would be on there. This is a history. It's kind of like... Here is... You're going to sound funny when I say this. It's kind of like Juliet's rap sheet. So if you ever get arrested, they're going to pull your rap sheet. Well, a credit report is kind of the same idea. They're pulling your rap sheet and they're seeing what things are on your credit report. The reason that you want to read through each and every one of these things is if something is wrong, this is the time to dispute it. Most credit reports, if you're looking at them online, they'll have a button over there next to it, says dispute. You can literally press the button and then a timeline starts. 30 days or 45 days, if it's an annual report, they have to update that information. So pay attention to each one of these. If you have a late payment, you're like, there's no way I was late. If it says it's your overbalance, any of those things, dispute, dispute, dispute. Let's move on to the next section because I think we still have a few

42:57more sections in this credit report. Let's go to credit inquiry. Yeah, and this is a big one. This is one of another ones where you want to look for fraud. A credit inquiry is one of those things we talked about. Did anybody go out there and apply for credit with your information, either with your social security number, with your name, with some kind of duration of your address or something like that. This is also an area that will affect your credit score. Let me explain to you why. If I'm a lender and I see that you are out there applying for credit everywhere, I'm beginning to get concerned. If you're young and you're just getting started, I'm going to expect more inquiries. If you're going out car shopping, I might expect more inquiries. But if I look at your credit report and you've got 100 inquiries in the last 30 days, I'm wondering what's going on. Are you struggling financially? Are you looking to find as much credit as you want because you're going to pop bankruptcy in three months? These are all the things we're looking at. But pay attention to those credit inquiries. If there's one on there that doesn't ring a bell to

44:00you, if it doesn't make sense to you, find out who that is. Most of the time, they'll list an 800 number, call them, pick up the phone. Did someone apply for credit in my name? The specifics on that because this could be a, hey, there is potential fraud. This is the number one thing. That's why when I talked about it last week, I use a product from Norton called LifeLock. LifeLock basically alerts me when anything affects my credit. If there is an inquiry, LifeLock is going to send me a message. They're going to call me. They're going to do an instant thing on my phone that says, hey, Ralph, someone is applying for credit in your name. That's why these credit inquiries are so important. Awesome. Do you see any inquiries on yours? Thankfully, no, because I did not inquire anywhere. So you haven't been outfishing for credit lately? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, physically, I have been, I don't know. I mean, obviously nobody's been trying to do anything in my name, which is good. Well, this is a great thing. So there's no nefarious

45:02people out there looking to steal. I'll tell you a funny story. There was one point when my credit was really bad because I made really bad decisions. And I used to chuckle. I was like, I would love somebody to steal my identity because they would try to apply for something. They'd be like, what? I can't believe your credit score is that low. It's kind of like my little dig in them. You want to come get me good luck with that because my credit score is in the toilet. So you're not getting anywhere. Anyway, that's just a little funny. Let's go to the next section or like the last two sections, which are pretty easy to go through. I think important messages and your rights. Yeah. These are the places where the credit bureau is telling you how they came to your credit score. They're telling you about how they're handling information on your credit report. They're telling you this skim over this. This is not a big deal. A lot of this is what we call boilerplate legal ease. The things that they're telling you that you have to know because hey, you have to know them, but it's not necessary anything actionable. So this is just an air. And then the final thing is your rights. They give you what's called a summary of the fair. And I'm looking to my side

46:04because I have a copy of my credit report of your pop up too. And they give you what's called a summary of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. That's the federal law that governs all of this. So understand all the things we talked about is governed by federal law. So you can go out there and Google search the Fair Credit Reporting Act and understand what your rights are. And you should do that. You should know what your rights are because so many decisions are made based on your credit. And the obvious ones are you go get alone. You go get a credit card. But what a lot of people don't know is they use this for employment screening. They use this for insurance pricing. Your credit and a specific specifically your credit score. And I want to take a couple minutes to talk about credit score if we have time. But your credit is what's building that credit score. That's why it is super important to know what you're looking at. Download that thing again, becomingfinanciallyconfident.com slash credit. And we actually put together, I think it's 16 pages. And what we put together it talks about what your report should look like. We talk about

47:05the four things that it changed on there recently. And then we give you actually a 16 point checklist that you can use with your own credit report. And you can go line by line and say, okay, Ralph said and Juliet said to look at this. And then we give you some more spreadsheet so you can fill in on calculations that you can do by hand. This is a great document. And you know, it's a little bit cumbersome. I'm not going to lie to you. But it's a way to get on the same page and understand what your credit is telling you because all of this sums up. This credit report helps build a credit score. That credit score is generally found at the top of your credit report. Juliet, the one that you got in front of you, do you see a credit score on there? I do. Yep. So that credit score is a range. Kind of like when you were in school. Now, most people would say to you, well, I have a credit score over 800. If your credit score is anything above about 775, you're considered to be in the best, you're the best. Don't get hung up on my score needs to be 800

48:10or my score needs to be 805. It's all ranges. If you go in and get a car loan, for example, there's, yeah, it may give you a simple example. So all lenders have what they call tiers. So like, for example, when I went to get my Toyota truck loan, I said, good and pull my credit, they said, oh, well, you're in the A tier, you're in the top tier. I'm like, well, that's good. I've worked hard to get to that point. Your credit, your interest rate, and a lot of cases is based on the tier that Jay put you in. Right. How many doors are there? Well, it depends. Every lender has different tiers. Generally, when I was working into credit, you and we used to have A through, basically, A through F, A paper, that's like when you were in school, you're getting A's. B paper, pretty good, but a couple of bumps in a route. C paper, we're like, yeah, yeah, if, okay, D and F paper, we skipped the E. I don't know why we skipped the E because kind of like back when we were in school. Those are the people that I'm looking more closely at. Those are the people are like, yeah, this person might have charge off. This person might have bankruptcy. This person might have open judgments. These are the people that the radar goes up. Yeah. But they're ranges. So don't

49:15get hung up one while my credit score is 793. And I'm just so disappointed because it's not 800. Don't sweat that. Just improve it. And I will say our producer, Abby, put it into the poll. So please do answer that. It is if you pull your credit report tonight, what are you most scared? Option A and account that you don't recognize to an old balance. I thought I was close. I thought was closed and three, honestly, nothing. I check it out a lot. And then InForeseeker in the comments said, please steal my debt. Yeah, I absolutely love them. I got to play this for info, seeker. Wow. How about that? Yeah, because I in for a seeker. I'm right there with you. This is awesome because this but but and here's why I want you to take away from this whole discussion. Yeah. It's a starting point. Right. Know what you're working with. Yeah. You can improve all of these things. It's not going to happen overnight. But if you continue with the blinders on like you can't see what's going on. It's never going to improve. It's never going to change. The thing

50:20that happened to me was that when I finally pulled my credit and I read it, I'm by line and think about this. This is what I did for a living. I worked in this and I didn't want to look at my own credit. But when I finally pulled that credit report and I went through it line by line and said, here are things that I can fix. I can get those credit card down, balances low so that my utilization isn't so high. I can make sure I sign up for automatic payments so I don't see the the mispayments. I can go and clean up any collection items. I can go and work on those things. But if you don't have the knowledge, if you haven't looked at these things, they're just going to continue to dog you and you're never going to get anywhere with this. One thing you talked about during this credit report is some you may find something that you have to file a report on, right? Can you give for all? File dispute. Oh, sorry. File dispute. Can you give let people know like kind of what that process entails? Sure. What you're basically saying when you dispute an item on your credit report, you're saying that it's a negative item and you disagree with that. So what you're going

51:23to have to do is you're going to have to say to them, first of all, here's a simple answer. If you're looking at an online and there's a little dispute button, click the dispute button and it'll walk you through what they're going to ask you. They're going to say to you, is this not your debt? Is the reporting information incorrect? Is the amount of credit outstanding wrong? All of those questions. Then the lender has 30 days or up to 45 days to do something about it. Here's the best part. If the lender doesn't respond, that can come off your credit report. Sometimes lenders have gone out of business, they've changed names, they don't care anymore. If you've got some potentially negative things on your credit, one of the ways you can do it is the dispute. Now, if it's really yours and you're like, you know what? I wasn't honored in my credit. Don't go out there to dispute it, to dispute it. That's not a good plan. Yeah. But anyway, to dispute it, you've got to have your information. Go and look at everything and say, what do I disagree about this? The common disputes are medical collection items. For example, you paid that and it was on your report twice

52:28or three times because it was given to other agencies. Maybe at some point, you were a co-signer on alone, but you went through the bank and you're no longer co-signer on the loan, like you went through a divorce or something like that. Sometimes you're correct. Correct. They can. Sometimes, maybe there's something that should be on your credit report, but it's not on your credit report. We talked about this a little earlier. I said trade lines. I used to see this a lot with people just getting started. I generally wouldn't give a loan to anybody unless they had at least four trade lines. In other words, they had four accounts, like a credit card because I don't know if they're going to pay their bills or not. If I don't have a history, unfortunately, this kind of discriminatory because if you're just getting started, but maybe I'll get started with you by getting that credit card for a $500 limit. That bill is a trade line. Once you get that one, then maybe you go get a car loan. The whole point is basically the scoring models only work if you've got more than four trade lines. Got it. That makes a lot of sense.

53:31The only thing we put in this worksheet is a problem log and dispute tracker. We can help you get through all of the pieces of that. We talk about how to fix something that's wrong. We give you the addresses, the email addresses, the phone numbers for EchoFacts, Experian, and TransUnion. We also talk about there with the Fairdeck credit card. What happens if the credit Bureau won't do anything? You do have some other things that you can do. Awesome. Amazing. I would say for everybody, it's really to make sure you have read your credit report, take a look at the resource we have put together because that will help guide you as you're maybe seeing your credit report for the first time. There's a lot of different activities exactly like what Ralph said that you can use if you do need to log a problem and a dispute. Then we have all these little tools. You have it in a nice little notebook. Anything else you want to add here, Ralph? Not at all. Let's get on to our money moves so we can check up and see where everybody is this week. That's good. I did not. I did not send my automatic payment yesterday.

54:35I got distracted. Just to remind everybody, we talked about this week. We're going to open up a separate high-yield savings account and we're going to set up one automatic transfer time to when your money actually comes into your account. That's your homework for this week. Julia had said she's not quite there yet, but I got a feeling that she's going to get there. Let me ask you this question, Julia. What was the friction that you hit? I think I just prioritized a lot of other tasks above this one. I will say which was surprising. It happened after the show. After yesterday's show, I was like, how can I feel so, I don't know, nervous in a sense? Because I know I have the money. I know I'm going to do the automatic of $5 each week. That's what I'm plan to do for now. By the way, I do have another high-yield savings account. I just want to be a part of this exercise as well. That's why. The feeling for me is just like, oh, this is just really putting personal finance

55:36front and center as we do these money moves. I felt uncomfortable because it was actually homework and people were doing it together. I'm like, oh, why? If you let me be, I could just do it on my own time, meaning I could procrastinate on it as long as I wanted to. That's just a feeling that I experienced yesterday. That's what I get it. What we're really asking you to do every week with these is be intentional. That's what we're asking. You said I'm putting it at the forefront and that's the whole deal. If you want to get to a place of becoming financially confident, if you want to be financially confident, you have to put these things in the front. You have to be intentional with these things. Yes, exactly. We'll check in tomorrow. If you guys have done it, let us know in the comments. But if not, there's two more days before the end of the week. Hopefully everybody can set it up. Just set up anything between $5, $10, any amount of what our request is or our homework

56:36is just to tie it to whenever you get paid. Just set amount and amount aside. Absolutely. And while you're talking about tomorrow, let's talk about what's going to be on the show tomorrow because we've got a great show plan for you tomorrow. Tomorrow we're going to talk about time shares. Time shares is like that cousin that nobody wants to talk about. A lot of us have been impacted by this. Juliet's got a story. I've got a story. You're not going to believe that my in-laws did. And I've seen clients try to unwind these things and we're going to break that all down. And the other thing, Juliet is going to put me on the spot tomorrow. And I got to be honest with you. You were talking about being a little anxious. I'm a little anxious tomorrow as well. She's going to ask the accountant and listen friends, I've got no idea what she's going to ask me. So make sure you join us tomorrow. But she's going to break it down and she's going to try to stump me. I think that's what she's really going to do. She's going to try to find that obscure question that let's see what Ralph says. So make sure you join us tomorrow every day, live at 11.30 a.m. at becomingfinanciallyconfident.com.

57:36Yes. And that is it for today's episode of Becoming financially confident. And I think we had a great day today. I'm Ralph Eastebb Jr. And I'm Juliet. Don't forget to send us things as send us any questions at Becomingfinanciallyconfident.com. And we will see you guys tomorrow. And remember our whole goal at Becoming financially confident is breaking free from money shame. One conversation at a time. So thank you so much for joining us. Don't forget, download our free credit thing at Becomingfinanciallyconfident.com.sashcredit. And before I leave, share the show with somebody else. Maybe you've got a friend who doesn't understand how to read their credit, share the show with them. That free resource is for anybody that wants it and everybody have a great day today.