Laurence Fishburne and Chad Silverstein discuss credit scores, which are calculated separately by three major bureaus with payment history counting for 35%. Silverstein explains how making minimum payments and talking to creditors helps, and introduces Restart, a free platform that helps people find jobs to solve income problems at the root.
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Foreign. Welcome, I'm Laurence Fishburne. Historians trace the word technology all the way back to our ancestors use of tools. From the Middle ages to the Industrial revolution and right through to today's digital age, technology has been and will continue to be a purposeful and dynamic part of our future. As we're about to see.
According to cnn, one in three adults have been turned over to a collection agency. Most people want to pay their bills but can't because they either don't make enough money or find themselves suddenly unemployed. As debt accumulates, people often give up, which makes the problem worse because companies will then have no choice but to use a collection agency to try to collect what's owed.
A credit report and your credit score is critical. It's your financial report card. It's what all lenders and creditors use to determine if you're a worthy candidate to extend credit to. What's so confusing about the credit report is that most people know what it's being used for, but they don't know any of the details and they think they have a credit score. But there are three national credit bureaus and they all have different variables that they use to determine what your score is. So you actually have multiple scores. So it's critical to make sure that you check your credit report at all three different major credit bureaus to see what one bureau has versus another bureau that may have something different. So the biggest thing about improving your credit score is making payments. About 35% of your score is determined on your payment history. So most people think because they're disputing or they don't think they owe something, they don't make a payment and then it gets sent to a collection agency and as soon as as that happens, it decks your score.
Climbing out of debt can seem impossible, and the stress and pressure from creditors and collection agencies can be overwhelming. Agencies arm collectors with call scripts and offer commission structures that incentivize collectors to try to collect more money. Creditors have high expectations and sometimes unreasonable demands, yet have little knowledge of what's actually going on behind the scenes at the collection agency.
Most people don't wake up every day and say they want to go work at a collection agency. And there's a good reason. Most offices have tight cubicle setups. You could have hundreds if not thousands of people right next to each other, tight with headsets and managers running around telling them what to do. Most people don't like working in that type of a setting and so they usually have to replace people. Often one of the best ways to improve your score and get out of debt is to not be put in collections in the first place. And the number one way you can do that is by making a minimum monthly payment and communicating with the creditors. They know not to turn you over to collections. And a lot of times the creditors just want to know your situation. So making a minimum payment, staying in constant communication, letting them know what's going on. And it's really important to monitor your credit reports so that you can dispute any inaccurate information. The way we help people get out of debt and help them find meaningful employment opportunities is by connecting to a career advisor with Restart. Restart is a career development platform that allows people to empower themselves so that they can obtain a job that they love. And we do it for free. But having that employer network and giving people the tools and the resources that they typically can't find on the Internet themselves, it's a win win for everybody involved. But the biggest takeaway for people who do business with us is the fact that we help people get jobs. And I think that if you go to the root of the problem that people can't pay their bills. It's always about income. And most people want to pay their bills. They genuinely care about their credit report. But once they're in debt, they kind of give up. Clients use us. They really enjoy the fact that we're unique and distinctly different from any other company in the country.
We hope this program has served as an inspiration to you. Be sure to join us next time as we continue to profile the people and organizations impacting the world. I'm Laurence Fishburne.
