What if you are looking to purchase a home in the coming year? What can you do? What can you expect? Jim Spiewak from KUTV in Salt Lake City highlights the challenges and identifies steps you can take to get the best deal for yourself.

You have student loans that you could have deferred them over the last year. But, you have been making payments to pay them down. You hear that the government may forgive student loan debt up to $50,000. Should you pay – or should you not? That is the million-dollar question.

A startling directive came out this week from Education Secretary Miguel Cardona. Any consumer who has defaulted on a federally-backed, privately serviced student loan will have their interest rates on their student loans dropped to 0%, and no monthly payments will need to be made to lenders for the time being.

There is one account in your credit report that is a definite driver to higher credit FICO scores. Do you know which one it is? This is where mismanagement can truly drop your FICO scores. It can take years to recover if a mistake is made.

We all get that periodic letter saying that we have missed a payment on a bill and it will be sent to collections. Sometimes, we catch it in time to avoid damaging our credit report. Other times, we do not. This is when millions of consumers panic. Collection activity has changed over the last few years. It is good to know what you are up against.

Can You Check Your Lender’s Credit Scores for Free? In short, the answer is “No” – Why do you have to pay to get your same credit scores used by lenders? It is the difference between lender’s credit scores and credit scores marketed all over the internet. I’ll explain.

Going from a 603 to a 815 credit score! Kevin had a low Classic FICO® credit score of 603. He didn't know where to go or what to do. He heard of My Credit Plan and decided to give it a try. He followed its counsel not knowing what to expect. His results left him stunned when he saw his 815 FICO Credit Score, 212 points higher! "All I did was follow what it (My Credit Plan) told me to do!"

$1.9 trillion – that is a lot of money. When politicians market this amount as stimulus to help all Americans, we have to realize it will help a few much more than most everyone else. President Joe Biden has said every taxpayer will receive $1,400 in this stimulus. There is a problem though. Take $1.9 trillion and divide by the number of United States taxpayers –144.3 million according to the Tax Foundation – and each taxpayer should receive $13,167. There is a huge difference between $1,400 and $13,167 – only $11,767! Where’s that extra $11,767 going? This is where most Americans lose.

The pandemic has really changed the way loans are repaid and how it impacts a person’s credit sanding. Several politicians have asked lenders to skip payments on a variety of loans including mortgages, auto and credit cards. We now have some political leaders asking lenders to not only skip loan payments, but also are asking the government to forgive the education loans for many students. So, what they are saying is a loan doesn’t have to be repaid according to the terms of the agreement, right? Where are we going with this?

Mark was making every effort to raise his FICO scores in order to purchase a home. His Experian (Classic) FICO scores was at 702. He had gone in and opened an account with Experian Boost hoping to increase his credit scores. However, he was questioning that maybe it was hurting his scores.