Today, a good credit score is essential for getting decent terms on credit--or for getting credit at all. But that's just the beginning: Your credit score rating can be reviewed by everyone from employers to cell phone carriers. Now, MSNBC/L.A. Times journalist Liz Weston has thoroughly updated her best-selling guide to credit scores, with crucial new information for protecting (or rebuilding) yours. Your Credit Score, Fourth Edition thoroughly covers brand-new laws changing everything from how your credit score can be used to how you can communicate with collectors. This edition also adds simple graphics revealing exactly how much skipped payments, bankruptcies, and other actions will lower your credit ratings, and how long it takes to rebound. You'll find new information on "FAKO" alternative scores, expanded coverage of short sales, foreclosures, the new FICO 8 Mortgage Score, and when to "walk away" from a mortgage. Learn how to protect yourself against new credit risks from social networking and mobile banking and how to safeguard against unethical or illegal use of credit scores by employers. Weston updates her expert guidance on using FICO 08 to raise your score, fighting lower limits and higher rates, maintaining the right mix of cards and balances, bouncing back from bad credit, choosing credit "solutions" that help, not hurt… and much more!
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From the Back Cover
“Recommended reading!”
-- Wall Street Journal Online
“A great credit score can help you finish rich! Liz Weston gives solid, easy-to-understand advice about how to improve your credit fast. Read this book and prosper.”
--David Bach, bestselling author of The Automatic Millionaire and The Automatic Millionaire Homeowner
“Excellent book! Insightful, well written, and surprisingly interesting. Liz Weston has done an outstanding job demystifying an often intimidating and frustrating topic for the benefit of all consumers.”
--Eric Tyson, syndicated columnist and bestselling author of Personal Finance for Dummies
“No one makes complex financial information easy to understand like Liz Weston. Her straight-talk and wise advice are invaluable to anyone with a credit card or checkbook--and that’s just about all of us.”
--Lois P. Frankel, Ph.D., author of Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office and Nice Girls Don’t Get Rich
“In a country where consumers increasingly pay more when they have bad credit, Liz Weston’s book provides excellent tips and advice on ways to improve your credit history and raise your credit score. If you just apply one or two of her insightful suggestions, you’ll save many times the cost of this book.”
--Ilyce R. Glink, financial reporter, talk show host, and bestselling author of 100 Questions Every First-Time Home Buyer Should Ask
“Your credit score can save you money or cost you money--sometimes a lot of money. Yet, most people don’t even know their scores, much less know how to make them better. Liz Weston can help you fix that. In this easy-to-understand guide, you’ll learn how to make sure your score helps you get the best deal on loans and insurance. You can’t afford not to read it.”
--Gerri Detweiler, consumer advocate and founder of UltimateCredit.com
America’s Most Trusted Guide to Improving Your Credit Score...
Now Completely Updated!
• Boosting your score: what works now, what doesn’t--and what you should never do!
• Detailed new charts: How short sales, foreclosures, and missed payments impact your score
• Must-have information about credit score abuse--and how to fight back
• By award-winning MSN Money/AARP financial columnist and public radio contributor Liz Weston
Your credit score is more important than ever: not just for getting loans, but for getting jobs, insurance, rentals, and fair rates on all financial services. Now, more than ever, you need America’s #1 guide to credit scores: Your Credit Score, by MSN and AARP columnist Liz Weston.
Accurate, expert, and proven, this book tells you the truth--and it’s already helped many thousands of people take control of their credit scores. Now, it’s completely revamped for today’s massive changes--from FICO 8 to “FAKO,” short sales to employer abuse of credit scores.
Whatever your score, you need this information--to defend yourself, and to get the credit, rates, work, and home you deserve!
About the Author
Liz is a regular commentator on American Public Media’s Marketplace Money and has contributed to NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” and “All Things Considered.” She has appeared on Dr. Phil, Today Show, and NBC Nightly News, and was for several years a weekly commentator on CNBC’s Power Lunch.
Her advice on credit and finance has been featured in Consumer Reports, Marie Claire, Parents, Real Simple, Woman’s World, Woman’s Day, Good Housekeeping, Family Circle, and many other publications.
Formerly a personal finance writer for the Los Angeles Times, Weston has won numerous reporting awards, including the 2010 Betty Furness Consumer Media Award by the Consumer Federation of America, designed to honor individuals who have made “exceptional progress in American consumerism.”
Her other books include The 10 Commandments of Money, which the New York Times praised as “a wonderful basic personal finance book…[with] enough counterintuitive ideas to keep even people who know a bit about personal finance reading further.” She is also the author of Deal with Your Debt and Easy Money, both published by Pearson.
Weston is a graduate of the certified financial planner training program at University of California, Irvine. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter. She can be reached via the “Contact Liz” form on her Web site, AskLizWeston.com.
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Customer Reviews
I would suggest, however, that if the reader's primary interest is the FICO score, they should first check out Understanding Your FICO Score, a 20-page booklet available free on the myfico.com website. This covers much of the material in Chapters 1 and 2 of Your Credit Score. If you want to learn more, I would then turn to Weston's book.
Readers who paid for a credit score online, expecting a FICO score, but receiving a VantageScore instead, will be particularly interested in Weston's Chapter 3. While the three major credit bureaus promote VantageScore as a superior alternative to FICO, Weston provides some valuable insights on the VantageScore vis-a-vis FICO; Weston also indicates free sources for VantageScore, saving the reader a typical $7.95 (or more) that many pay for this score.
So, my only caution to readers is that about one-half of the book has general applications for all readers and the other half is primarily relevant to those in financial distress. If you are not facing credit issues, you may wish to closely examine the Table of Contents to determine if Your Credit Score is right for you.
Some people may have enjoyed reading all the history of the credit industry, but for me it was boring and not helpful. I was disappointed.
The ways to improve your credit score are nothing new if you are fairly knowledgable about credit. It reinterates many of the basic tips that most are familiar with like ensuring there are no errors on your credit report and paying your bills on time.
I think this book would provide any person with some knowledge about credit and help those who have serious credit problems with a way to organize their clean-up game plan.
Worth reading for all.
More About the Author
Her first book, "Your Credit Score," is the best-selling book on credit scoring and was recently published in a fourth edition. Her other recent books include "The 10 Commandments of Money" and the ebook "There Are No Dumb Questions About Money."
Liz's columns run twice a week on MSN Money, which reaches more than 12 million readers each month. Millions more read her question-and-answer column 'Money Talk,' which appears in newspapers throughout the country, including the Los Angeles Times, the Portland Oregonian, Stars & Stripes and others.
Liz has appeared on "The Dr. Phil Show," "The Today Show" and "CBS Evening News with Brian Williams" and is frequently featured on American Public Media's "Marketplace Money" and NPR's 'Talk of the Nation' and "All Things Considered." She was for several years a weekly commentator on CNBC's "Power Lunch."
Weston is a graduate of the certified financial planner training program at University of California, Irvine. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter. She can be reached via her Web site, AskLizWeston.com.
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