4 Credit Score Myths That Are Totally Wrong

We all know that your credit score is really important, so it's no surprise that you'd want to increase your credit score whenever possible.

First, it's important to know what your credit score says about you. It's a measure of your creditworthiness. It's not a measure of your wealth. It's not a measure of how much you make. It's simply a measure of how risky a borrower you are. Risky borrowers are ones that miss payments or default. Safe borrowers pay on time and have a long history of doing so.

To help you better understand credit scoring, here are four myths around scores that are totally wrong.

1. Carrying a Balance Helps Your Score

Carrying a balance on a credit card means you don't pay it off in full each month. As a result, you pay interest on the credit card debt, often in the double digits. Carrying a balance is not necessary for improving your credit at all.

Your credit card issuer generally reports your balance when the statement period ends. It doesn't break it out into the balance you carry and the balance you accrued that statement period. If you spend $1,000, pay it off entirely, and then charge another $1,000 – your credit card company will tell the credit bureaus that you had two months with a balance of $1,000 and on-time payments.

If you spend $1,000, pay off $500, charge another $500 – your credit card company will tell the credit bureaus that you had two months with a balance of $1,000 and on-time payments. By carrying a balance of $500, you're paying more in interest but with no real benefit to your credit score.
Carrying a balance will not increase your score, so pay off your statement each month if you can.

2. Your Credit Utilization Doesn't Matter

If you're close to maxing out on your credit cards, that's a bad thing. Utilization is a measure of how much you're using your available credit. Use too much, and you're seen as a risk. Use too little, and you're seen as safer.
You may note that utilization, which plays a role in 30% of your FICO score, has nothing to do with your income. Making extra money can impact your total credit limit, so use it to your advantage if you can get an increase on your credit limits, but the income itself doesn't help utilization.

You could be making millions of dollars a year but your score could be lowered because you've utilized too much of your available credit.

3. You Only Need a Credit Card

Getting a credit card is a good start to building a strong credit score, but it's not enough. You really want to have a mix of accounts, like a student loan or a mortgage, to show you can handle different types of debt. This mix makes up 10% of your FICO score.

You shouldn't take on unnecessary debt with the sole purpose of building credit, but it's important to note it's hard to get a high credit score without it. An unsecured line of credit, like a credit card, is just a strong first step.

4. Paying Off Old Delinquent Debts Will Instantly Fix Your Score

We all make mistakes and perhaps one of yours is now a delinquent loan or a charged off credit card account. If you have the funds, it may be tempting to pay them off. And, in fact, it might be the best course of action, since unpaid debts can lead to a collections account, judgment or wage garnishment — and the first two of those three adverse actions can directly lower your credit score, while the last one can really hamper your finances in general.

Still, it's important to understand that paying these old debts won't automatically fix all your credit score problems. Most negative information remains on credit reports for seven years (some bankruptcies can stay on for ten) — and that includes delinquent accounts that have been brought back into good-standing. (You can go here to learn more about how long things stay on your credit report.)

And, if you pay off an old debt, it may restart the 7-year clock. So, yes, past mistakes can affect your scores for quite some time. The good news is, the effects they have on your credit will lessen over time. And there are things you may able to do in the interim — like paying down high credit card balances or disputing errors on your credit reports — that can raise your scores.

Infomercial Marketer Kevin Trudeau’s Weight-Loss Book

The Federal Trade Commission is mailing checks totaling approximately $6.3 million to consumers who bought Kevin Trudeau’s book, “The Weight Loss Cure ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Know About.” In 2009, a federal judge ordered Trudeau to repay millions of dollars to consumers after he violated a 2004 FTC stipulated order by misrepresenting the book’s content.

For years, Trudeau fought the FTC’s efforts to collect the money he owes consumers, including repeatedly denying that he had any money and hindering efforts to find his money. During one court proceeding, he “took the fifth” hundreds of times rather than answer questions about where his money was. At one point, the judge jailed Trudeau for not cooperating. Eventually, a court-appointed receiver located a portion of the money, which the FTC is now using to partially repay consumers.

Consumers should deposit or cash checks within 60 days of the mailing date. Those who deposit or cash their checks may receive future proceeds if funds become available. The FTC never requires consumers to pay money or to provide information before refund checks can be cashed. Consumers who receive checks and have questions can contact the FTC’s refund administrator, Analytics, at 844-828-4437. Learn more about this refund program at ftc.gov/trudeau.

This article by the FTC was distributed by the Personal Finance Syndication Network.

1% Are Recovering From Recession - The 99% Are Still Waiting

The top 1% of Americans are finally recovering from the great recession. A new analysis of IRS data revealed that the average income of the top 1% of income earners grew by 7.7% in 2015, reaching $1.36 million.
Report author Emmanuel Saez, an economics professor at the University of California-Berkeley, calculated earlier this year that the top 1% had an average income of $1.26 million in 2014. And though the world’s wealthiest were able to raise that income to $1.36 million within one year, they are still not making as much as they were just before the 2008 recession. 

Saez revealed that in 2015, the rich were also taking home larger chunk of the U.S. income. “The share of income going to the top 10% of income earners -- those making on average about $300,000 a year increased to 50.5% in 2015 from 50.0% in 2014, the highest ever except for 2012,” Saez wrote. 

“The share of income going to the top 1% of families -- those earning on average about $1.4 million a year -- increased to 22% in 2015 from 21.4% in 2014.”

According to him, while the 1% power ahead and continue to reclaim income lost during the recession, a full recovery for the bottom 99% remains elusive. “Six years after the end of the Great Recession, those families have recovered only about 60% of their income losses due to that severe economic downturn,” he said.

It should not come as a shock that to many Americans talk of economic recovery rings hollow. The top 1% of families saw their income grow by 37% between 2009 to 2015, from $990,000 to $1.36 million. The incomes of the other 99%, however, grew by just 7.6% during that time -- from $45,300 in 2009 to $48,800 in 2015.

In 2015, the income of the 99% grew by just 3.9%. After factoring in inflation, Saez calls it: “the best real income growth in 17 years”. And the rich? At 7.7%, their growth was twice that.

Related: 'Bombshell' jobs report puts economic growth back in US election spotlight
Economy remains a top concern for U.S. voters, according to a recent Gallup survey of 1,530 adults. More than 90% of them said that economy was extremely important to them and 89% of them said the same of jobs and employment. 

The income inequality has not escaped the attention of the Obama White House or those vying to succeed him.

“Inequality is still too high,” Barack Obama said in June while speaking about the U.S. economy in Elkhart, Indiana. “The gap between rich and poor is bigger now than it’s been just about any time since the 1920s.”
For much of his two-term presidency, Obama has been pushing Congress to raise the federal minimum wage in hopes that it would raise incomes of the poorest Americans. Both former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who are running for president as Democrats, have pushed for higher minimum wage and spoken about income inequality on the campaign trail.

The uneven recovery is one of the reasons that experts say this presidential election cycle has seen the rise of Donald Trump and a contentious race for the Democratic nomination.

Why are white people expats when the rest of us are immigrants?

In the lexicon of human migration there are still hierarchical words, created with the purpose of putting white people above everyone else. One of those remnants is the word “expat”.

Posh white blokes: holding back the struggle for a fairer world?

 

Read more

What is an expat? And who is an expat? According to Wikipedia, “an expatriate (often shortened to expat) is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country other than that of the person’s upbringing. The word comes from the Latin terms ex (‘out of’) and patria (‘country, fatherland’)”.

Defined that way, you should expect that any person going to work outside of his or her country for a period of time would be an expat, regardless of his skin colour or country. But that is not the case in reality; expat is a term reserved exclusively for western white people going to work abroad.

Africans are immigrants. Arabs are immigrants. Asians are immigrants. However, Europeans are expats because they can’t be at the same level as other ethnicities. They are superior. Immigrants is a term set aside for ‘inferior races’.

Don’t take my word for it. The Wall Street Journal, the leading financial information magazine in the world, has a blog dedicated to the life of expats and recently they featured a story ‘Who is an expat, anyway?’. Here are the main conclusions: “Some arrivals are described as expats; others as immigrants; and some simply as migrants. It depends on social class, country of origin and economic status. It’s strange to hear some people in Hong Kong described as expats, but not others. Anyone with roots in a western country is considered an expat … Filipino domestic helpers are just guests, even if they’ve been here for decades. Mandarin-speaking mainland Chinese are rarely regarded as expats … It’s a double standard woven into official policy.”

Is there any space in the development debate for African experts?

 

Read more

The reality is the same in Africa and Europe. Top African professionals going to work in Europe are not considered expats. They are immigrants. Period. “I work for multinational organisations both in the private and public sectors. And being black or coloured doesn’t gain me the term “expat”. I’m a highly qualified immigrant, as they call me, to be politically correct,” says an African migrant worker.

Most white people deny that they enjoy the privileges of a racist system. And why not? But our responsibility is to point out and to deny them these privileges, directly related to an outdated supremacist ideology. If you see those “expats” in Africa, call them immigrants like everyone else. If that hurts their white superiority, they can jump in the air and stay there. The political deconstruction of this outdated worldview must continue. 

Source: The Guardian

Effort is important, but knowing where to make an effort makes all the difference!

The engine of a giant ship failed to start.

The ship's owners tried one expert after another, but none of them could figure out how to fix the engine.

Then they brought in an old man who had been fixing ships since he was a youngster. He carried a large bag of tools with him, and when he arrived, he immediately went to work. He inspected the engine very carefully, top to bottom.

Two of the ship's owners were there, watching this man, hoping he would know what to do. After looking things over, the old man reached into his bag and pulled out a small hammer. He gently tapped something. Instantly, the engine lurched into life. He carefully put his hammer away. The engine was fixed!

A week later, the owners received a bill from the old man for ten thousand dollars.

"What?!" the owners exclaimed. "He hardly did anything!"

So they wrote the old man a note saying, "Please send us an itemized bill."

The man sent a bill that read:

Tapping with a hammer $ 2.00
Knowing where to tap $ 9998.00

Effort is important, but knowing where to make an effort makes all the difference!

What to Do When Your Boss Plays Favorites

Karl Moore remembers the moment he fell out of favour with his boss.

He was working as a manager at IBM in Toronto when a new person joined his department. Up until then Moore had been part of his boss’s “favoured inside circle” — but suddenly everything changed. The transferred employee became his boss’s new right-hand person, the outcome of brutal office politics.

“Good news for the team. but I was soon put on the bench,” said Moore, now a professor at McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management in Montreal, Canada. It certainly wasn’t a fun experience — and it definitely made his job harder, he said.

If your boss plays favourites — but you’re not one of them — is there anything you can do about it? And should you even care if you're never flavour of the month? After all, nobody likes a sycophant.

After about a year, once again the sun shone upon me.

Moore eventually made it back to being one of the favoured few. But it took some time waiting for “the new person’s halo to diminish a bit”. More importantly, Moore was able to change the tide after he delivered on a couple of key agenda items for his boss that were central to his success. “After about a year, once again the sun shone upon me,” he said. 

Falling out of favour for no good reason is a difficult turn to take. But, it doesn’t have to be permanent. Here’s what you can do.

Office politics can lead one person to get most-favoured status. 

Deliver

Think about exactly what your boss needs to succeed and look good to his bosses. Find a way to help make it happen.

“One of things that makes virtually all bosses smile on us is if we help them deliver on one of the top items on their agenda for the year,” said Moore. “If you can better understand your boss’s top three agenda items and help them achieve one of those, they will tend to nudge you toward the favourites category.”

Sometimes it can be as simple as asking about priorities and then helping to make sure that at least one of them comes to fruition, said Moore.

Boss as customer

For Andrew Wittman, a former marine, police officer, and federal agent, the solution is to change your perspective.

 It's important not to start feeling bad about yourself.

“No matter where you work or for whom, when you approach work from the perspective that says, ‘My boss is not my boss; he or she is my customer or client’, everything changes,” said Wittman, managing partner of South Carolina-based leadership consultancy Mental Toughness Training Center. “You’ll instantly have all the power and control. You are merely leasing your services to the company. They are your client and you give them great customer service.”

It’s important not to start feeling bad about yourself — or letting the idea of not being a favourite take over your thoughts, said Wittman. Otherwise, that’s all you will think about and you’ll lose out on opportunities to get ahead.

You can get back to the inner circle with the boss. 

“If you focus on making your boss a satisfied customer and making she or he look great to the higher ups, which will lead to being a ‘favourite’, your brain will sift through all the facts and data and confirm you are a favourite,” said Wittman. As a result, you’ll be less critical, be able to focus on solving problems more intently and act in ways that will naturally make the boss happy.

The inner circle

Just because your boss doesn’t seem to like you doesn’t automatically mean other people won’t.

If the crowd likes you, it can help sway the boss's opinion.

“Try to get in good with the people who are the boss's favourites,” said New York-based Vicky Oliver, author of Bad Bosses, Crazy Coworkers & Other Office Idiots. “Sometimes if a boss's pet raves about you, it can help ease the friction.”

And always strive to be a good team player. “If the crowd likes you, it can help sway the boss's opinion,” she said.

A fine line

Don’t go overboard fawning on your boss, thereby alienating yourself from your colleagues or making them resent you. For instance, if your boss tells a lame joke and you laugh louder than everyone else, that is just outright brown nosing, according to Oliver.

Don't try too hard or people will think you're brown nosing. 

“But if you come in with a solution to a problem that no one else has considered, that is simply shining on your own merit,” she said. And, spread the love when you do: “If you laud others on the team for helping you arrive at a solution, that is bound to score points with the boss and with your teammates.”

Keep your options open

Rare these days is a boss — or subordinate — who sticks around for life. So, luckily you are unlikely to be wedded to this person for eternity.

You probably won’t like working for someone who plays favourites, even if you become the flavour of the month.  But don’t let yourself fall into a workplace pit of despair over it. Instead, continue working hard and behaving professionally and show that you care about the team, company, and clients.

“At the same time, you should be working your way into a different position where the boss is a better one and so you can focus more on being great at your job and growing toward your next promotion,” said Moore.

Natural rememdies

African women have worn headscarves for many years for religious, cultural reasons and even as a fashion statement but they were traditionally worn by older, usually married women.

They are a common feature in ceremonies such as weddings and even funerals.

Many also love the convenience of it - it can be a quick fix for a bad hair day.

And young African women are embracing the doek (in Afrikaans) or dhuku in Malawi and Zimbabwe.

One of the most popular forms of headscarves across Africa is the gele from West Africa. It can be incredibly elaborate and is usually starched so the material becomes stiff to hold its shape.

In Nigerian how a Yoruba woman wears her headscarf can be a sign of her marital status - if worn with the ends facing down its means a woman is married and if worn with the ends up, she is single.

Here in Southern Africa, there is a necessary debate about the dhuku in the corporate world.

A news reporter from an independent news channel trended on social media after it emerged that her story had been taken off air because she filmed it wearing a doek.

Cue social media storm.

The hashtags #RespekTheDoek  #RespekTheDhuku and #DoekTheNewsroom trended for a number of days here last week with many people - including men and even women from all racial groups - wearing a dhuku to show their support for the young journalist.

The channel, while explaining that its dress code does not allow on-air journalists to wear headgear to work, has said it is now reviewing that policy.

But many believe the channel's reaction showed how the workplace has not changed with the times.

Some say it shows an intolerance to black culture.

"We are, after all, in Africa where we have to be sensitive to everyone's culture and not just of those that don't wear dhukus," says one former entertainment writer.

"But don't forget that the workplace also insinuates that black natural hair is unprofessional. It seems looking African is unprofessional, which is rather ludicrous."

Kgothatso Maditse, a poet, agrees.

"It just goes to show just how far we are from accepting anything African if it doesn't have the 'right' stamp of approval. The longer we keep avoiding these topics, the longer we prolong and pacify an obviously stale way of thinking," she says.

'Good woman'

Image caption

My mother-in-law, who has been married for more than 40-years, wears it the same way.

For a while I had a love-hate relationship with the doek - it felt like a throwback to the past. It seemed like yet another way society was controlling how black women should look.

But a new generation of young women have now reclaimed the look - sporting a range of prints from all around Africa, they see the doek as an expression of what it is to be African.

And so I've grown to appreciate the delicate balance between ancient symbolism and modern identity - and made it my personal mission to celebrate its new-found power.

Kamogelo Seekoei, a Johannesburg writer, describes her headscarf as "a crown".

"Only a matriarch will know that a covered head means queen. We as black girls are out here celebrating our existence like never before," she says simply.

She says headscarves are a sign of "Queening" - a term used to refer to a social movement of black women from around the world who are embracing black beauty and power.

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A selection of names for headscarves around Africa:

• South Africa - Doek
• Malawi/ Zimbabwe - Dhuku
• Ghana - Duku
• Nigeria - Gele
• Sudan - Tarha
• Sierra Leone - Enkeycha
• East Africa (Swahili) - Kilemba
• DR Congo (Lingala) - Kitambala
• Rwanda/ Burundi - Igitambara
• Uganda - Ekitambala (Luganda)/ Latam wich (Acholi)
• Zambia - Chitambala 
• From oppression to power

A number of high-profile African women are often pictured in elaborate headscarves, such as Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, African Union (AU) head Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

But the doek here is also rooted in racial politics.

Image copyright

The dhuku has become a popular fashion accessory among young Africans.  #VivianCollections

In South Africa, black domestic workers have worn it as part of their cleaning uniform for decades and it has served as a not-so-subtle reminder of that person's social standing.

It is a way of exerting control - an outward symbol of the gulf between servant and master.

This perhaps explains my reservations about headscarves at first.

Some say it is beginning to shed that image.

Image copyright

Image captionWearing a headscarf is also about convenience.                                                                #VivianCollections

"Africans are going through a state of being woke [awakened]. Africans are coming back to themselves," says Tumi Ndaba, the owner of Tuku Affair, a Pretoria-based company that sells headscarves from materials bought all over Africa.

"The doek never left, it was just worn in a way that wasn't really appealing us, but the more we fall in love with ourselves, the more we work harder at perfecting and beautifying everything that belongs to us," she tells me.

South Africa, whose constitution is rooted in celebrating cultural diversity, is growing up and its people are now more than ever using their voice and asserting their identity.

And so on days when I wear a doek (which is admittedly sometimes on bad hair days), I feel regal.

Like many young people here, I now wear it as a statement, to celebrate Africa - with all its flaws and beauty and its journey to finding itself.

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