Vision Credit Education, Inc.

Recently, I had the pleasure to be featured as a guest on the Tarheel Talk weekly television program. The program topic was credit, including the uses of credit and the components of a credit score.

Tarheel Talk is a weekly program that tackles important issues with the help of community leaders and service providers. It helps viewers understand issues that may be affecting them and it provides links to community resources.

The program featured myself, Triangle Family Service’s Rebekah O’Connell and host Sonya Williams. Together, we discussed the various components that go into your credit score and the importance of each as it relates to your credit score. The components we examined include:

• Payment history (35% of credit score)
• Debt balances (30% of score)
• Account history (15% of score)
• New accounts (10% of score)
• Types of accounts (10% of score)

We talked about how each one of these components can affect your credit score either positively or negatively. Additionally, we examined how you could focus on one or more of these components as you try to repair your credit.

The conclusions that we reached were that you can repair your credit on your own for free if you dispute your own credit report inaccuracies, catch up delinquent payments and begin paying off your largest and most recent collection accounts. Additionally, you can do this without enlisting the services of costly and largely ineffective credit repair agencies, of which many have been under recent investigation through a crackdown recently announced by the Federal Trade Commission.

Finally, we discussed budgeting. Rebekah O’Connell encouraged families to keep receipts in an envelope to account for all expenditures. We also agreed that one of the best ways to start a budget is to simply grab a pencil and paper and create one in a few minutes. Most important, make sure your budget is realistic so that you can stick with it.

The show will be aired throughout central North Carolina on Sunday, October 26 at 6:30 am on Fox50. Additionally, you may catch a re-broadcast on the WRAL Newschannel (ch. 256 on digital cable) according to this schedule:

• Sunday, October 26 from 4:30 – 5:00 pm
• Tuesday, October 28 from 10:35 – 11:00 pm
• Saturday, November 1 from 4:30 – 5:00 am
• Sunday, November 2 from 3:00 – 3:30 am