Summary
In this Interview I speak with Rick Jackson about the importance of consulting with a credit repair specialist and shares his own intention to have a consultation with Rick Jackson. He emphasizes that having errors removed from one’s credit report can lead to lower borrowing costs and improve financial well-being. The speaker also mentions that this episode of the podcast is sponsored by savvy seller seminar.com, where individuals can sign up for a free seller seminar. The episode concludes with the speaker thanking Rick Jackson and expressing excitement for future episodes of the podcast.
Transcript
Hello and welcome to episode 29 of the Beta Bay Podcast. I’m your host, Seb Fry, and this week my guest is Rick Jackson. He is a credit repair specialist. Now, in my line of work as a real estate agent, I do from time to time, run across people who have less than stellar credits. And those folks are often referred, not by me, but usually by their mortgage professional to a credit repair specialist to improve their scores. So I kind of wanted what that whole process was all about. So I reached out to Rick Jackson of Credit Repair Bay Area to have a talk about the credit repair process. And I learned something that I did not expect to learn during our conversation, and that is, is that really everyone needs a credit repair specialist. It’s not just our people who have bad credit or who need to make a major purchase.
Consulting with a credit repair specialist should be considered just good financial hygiene because over the life of your credit history, you’ll end up saving potentially tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of your borrowing career by having good financial hygiene and a good clean credit report and high credit score. So that was pretty interesting to me, and I think I’m going to pop on over to Rick’s office, sit down and have a consultation and see what I can do about improving my own credit score. Because who knows, maybe it’ll cause my credit card interest rates to drop, or my car loan or who knows what is Pretty interesting conversation, and I learned a ton about the credit repair business and what it takes to get a good high credit score. So I know this is going to be of interest to a lot of listeners out there. So without further ado, please sit back, relax, and hear what Rick Jackson has to say.
Alright, everybody, I have on the line today, Rick Jackson with Credit Repair Bay Area. Rick, how are you doing?
I’m doing great.
Hey man, thanks so much. I’m okay. I am really excited that you’re on the show. Thank you so much for making the time. I’d like to start my podcast by asking my guests to tell me a little story to get a feeling for who you are and what you’re about. Do you have any story you can share with us?
Well, I thought about that a little bit. You told me, make it personal. So I really don’t have any dramatic stories, but I do remember when I was young and I thought about how I got where I am today, what started it kind of. And back when I was a boy, my father, I come from a musical background. My father was a professional musician. My brother was a professional musician, and I played professionally for many years. But in the beginning, when I was a boy, my dad used to teach guitar at the music store. I was born and raised in Merced, California, and he would teach at the music store there. So I’d go down with him at times
And
I noticed something as a boy. I remember this looking at the man that owned this store. It seemed like he was doing quite well. He drove a really nice car. I went to his house a couple times, had a much nicer house than we had, and that kind of stuck in my mind, and when I got a little older, I thought, you know what? I’m going to maybe go after that. I’m going to travel that path, get into retail. I was young and naive. I didn’t know much, right? Because retail is not something I would suggest anybody get into today. But back then it was looking good. So I got into it and I opened up my first gift shop when I was 19 years old. Now, I was in a building, actually, I started at a smaller spot, but then the landlord had a bigger building on Main Street.
And so I moved my store and built it bigger and bigger. Two oh 5,000 square foot gift shop, if you can believe that, in Merced. And so it was 5,000 square foot upstairs, which was empty, 5,000 square foot downstairs, which was my store. Well, one day the roof started leaking and the water came down and started destroying some of my merchandise. So I called the landlord, I said, can you please fix this? He said, okay. About two weeks go by, nothing happened. So I went down to his office, I said, listen, we have to fix this. And he floored me. He said, well, why don’t you just buy that building from me? I said, I mean, what really? Ironically enough, this building was the building where that music store was when I was a boy. He had moved his music store down the street, and so there was that building. I thought, oh my goodness, I can own this thing. So I finagled what I could, and I actually had a friend come in with me and we bought it, and that started my interest in real estate. And then I bought other properties through the years. I had a portfolio, but I did stay with my business and it grew from gifts. I went into wholesaling, had a wholesaling rep repping company that did California. Really did some really big companies like Coca-Cola and Harley Davidson, things like that. You remember the Beanie Baby craze? I was
Really
In it at that time. That was going crazy. I got into some collectibles like that. I did quite well to the point to where I came up with my own idea and started manufacturing and importing from Italy and selling across the country. I knew how to do the repping business. And so I just did that. But then in oh six, China came in to play. I’m sure everybody remembers China and their effect upon the market when they came in, everything was so cheap. I think they’re having labor at 23 cents an hour so no one could compete with them. So they started knocking off my stuff. So it forced me to go to and buy from them for a little while. But then after about a year or two, they started flooding the market and the category I was in collapsed. So that put me in a financial bind.
Now, I had lost my business. I had some real estate, but I was getting in trouble credit wise. So now I look at my credit report. I think I wanted to buy something. If I remember I wanted to buy a house or something and I couldn’t do it. So that started me looking at my credit for the first time in my life, looking at my credit. And so then I actually told a friend one day, I said, I think I’m going to have to go bankrupt because I couldn’t find out any other way to get out of the problem I was in. I owed people and blah, blah, blah. And he said to me, no, do not do that. He says, let me introduce you to someone. So I was living in Hollister at the time, and so he took me up to your San Jose where I am now, and he introduced me to this guy that said, no, just don’t worry about it.
I’m going to take care of it for you. And I just said, what do you mean? He says, well, I can help you. How can you help me? I was in the mindset, I think that most people were, or even still that you can’t do anything about your credit. It is what it is, which is not true. We have many laws now that people can use that I use to help people get out of their binds. And so he did it, and he did his magic. And I mean within, wow, three months, four months, my whole game turned. It just went away a lot. He got rid of a lot of negatives. He helped me take care of some of the debt I owed, and within six months I was in good shape. And so that just floored me. Now, I had lost my business.
I didn’t know what I was going to do, and that was such a miracle in my eyes. I said, I’m going to help people because one of my goals in life is to help people. I feel good about that. I think it’s built into us to help people. And I’ve learned that over my age and time. And so I went, I’m going to do that. So I got into it in about oh seven. So I’ve been at about 11 years actually ended up buying his business and then growing. So here I am, credit Repair Bay area, helping people out of their credit problems. And if there’s any, one thing I could really say to people is, do not be afraid to look at your credit. It’s just information. It’s all it is. And it’s information gathered by these big bureau companies. There’s three of ’em. There’s Equifax, there’s Experian, and TransUnion, and all they do is gather information. That’s all they do. And so now somebody has all of your financial information somewhere, wouldn’t it behoove you to go and look at it and see what are they saying about you? Because listen, they’re handling over 400 million people. You don’t think they make mistakes all the time. Okay. So I guarantee you probably 80% of people have something wrong in their report that can be helped and corrected.
Right. Cool. So you said you grew up in Merced?
Yeah.
Okay. Alright. So what was that like? I mean, how old are you today? Do you mind my asking? How old are you?
Well, I’m 70.
70 years old. Okay.
I just turned 70. How about that?
So 1948, you were born, is that right?
That’s correct. Right.
Okay. So you grew up in the fifties in Merced?
I did.
What was me
The fifties? I was the sixties child. I was a child of the sixties. I like to say, because when all that happened, I was right there and say, I played music. My family was music. So I picked up the guitar. My dad gave me one lesson, I didn’t practice, so he fired me. So I took a guitar and started listening to songs and just learning by ear, and I have a good ear for it. So I picked it up, I sang, I could sing. I was in the choir. So I got a rock band going right out of high school. And we became quite popular in the valley over there. And I ended up about three, four years in that band traveling around. We played the Fillmore a couple times. We played at the, it was called the Gathering of the Tribes in Golden Gate Park with Janice Joplin and Santana. We opened up for Fleetwood Mac, the original Fleetwood Mac of the Fillmore. So that was my early days.
Wow, how awesome was that?
Yeah, it was was great fun. I really enjoyed it. I do remember it.
Wow. I’m super jealous. I’m a big deadhead actually.
Are you really? Yes. Yeah,
I really am. So I’m all about sixties music and seventies music too. I wish I was born 10 years earlier because the seventies, that was my era musically, I feel. I mean, that’s
Seventies was still good though. A lot of good music came in the seventies.
A lot of good music came out of the seventies. Yeah, for sure. So you Oh, go on.
No, go ahead.
Oh, I was just going to say that you are a relatively recent resident of the Bay Area. Sounds like.
Well, I’ve been here about 20 years now. I say 20 years. But see, I was in Hollister. I first moved over to Hollister, and the reason was is the pricing. I came from Ed at my house. We were going to sell it and buy a place over here. But you know what the difference of that is, it’s unbelievable. So I first went to San Jose and I couldn’t afford that. I went down to Gilroy. They said, go to Gilroy, I went to Gilroy. I couldn’t afford that. What do I do? Go to Hollister. So we went down to Hollister and I actually could swing one in Hollister. So I bought a home there and stayed there for shoot, 10 years I guess. And then that’s when all the business happened and all of that stuff. And then, so the writing was on the wall. If I was going to do the business, I had to be in San Jose, of course, where the population is. So I made that decision. So we sold and came here.
So is Hollister considered part of the Bay Area people?
I was going to say that, yes. South Bay,
South Bay.
They actually say that. So I’ll say Hollister is the most South Bay residence there is.
Okay. Alright, good.
It’s the bottom of the south,
Right? Well, it’s actually still pretty affordable. I mean by Bay Area standards
Comparatively. Absolutely. The only way to go if you come from the valley. I mean, prices here are so unbelievable. Now I still get sticker shock because I was born and raised over there and I still have a hard time believing the medium price housing here. It’s crazy to me, but it is what it is. So we deal with it.
Right. And Hollister’s a nice place actually. It’s a
Beautiful place.
Yeah,
We loved it there. I’m going to tell a secret about Hollister because people used to ask me, what are you doing there? It’s so hot. Well, here’s a secret about Hollister, and I shouldn’t say this to the public, but they want to keep this secret. They want to stay small basically. But the weather there, there’s a natural channel in the mountains to where you get a cool breeze coming in the morning and it’s almost like having an air conditioning duck from the ocean. And it comes in and it cools the area down and it is nowhere near like Gilroy or even it’s even better than San Jose. But being there 10 years, it turned, it was getting hotter, there’s no doubt about it. And so now I have to say, it does get hot probably 15 days out of the summer that you’ll have some uncomfortable weather.
But
When first was over there, it was gorgeous. I loved it. The first thing I noticed when we drove through town, there was no air conditioning on the houses,
Right? Yeah. That’s your key indicator there.
Can you imagine that?
Climate life, imagine.
Yeah, I nudged my wife, I said, Mary, look, no air, and I’m coming from Merced. Okay. That was a shoe in for us,
Right? For sure, for sure. So you said you bought the credit repair business like 11 years ago, you said?
Yeah, probably 10
Years ago
I was with this guy. I actually worked for him with him for a couple of years and then he kind of just wanted to go another direction. So I actually bought his business and then built it from there.
Okay. So do you need any kind licensing? I mean, how does that work? Like the credit repair business?
Well, yeah. It’s one of those things about government, and I don’t quite understand it to be frank with you, but yes, you’re supposed to be registered with the state. That’s what some people say, but people don’t do it. And I don’t know what that’s all about. I know that that law, if it is a law, and I think it is, it’s on the books, they don’t act upon it
And forced. There’s no bureau of credit repair.
So here’s the thing, anybody can have a phone and a business card and say they’re in credit repair and this is a real bad situation. I’ve griped about this for many years. There’s people out there just, I’m sorry, but they’re burning people. They’re telling ’em the wrong information. There’s little programs you can buy online now that makes you a credit repair person and it is really bad. And then you have the national companies, this is a gripe of mine that are the $99 guys, 79 now another company came out two months ago, $79 now, yes, they’ll work your credit. And they’re legitimate as far as what they do, and all they do is go after negatives. And with credit, you’ve got to understand that you have to have your credit balanced. It’s good and bad. If you do not balance it out and get it correct, then your score is not going to go up enough to help you. So I have people coming to me with these national companies saying, I paid $99 for 10 months and my score went up 20 points. I said, I know. Sit down. Let me show you how it works and why I can get people up a hundred points more.
Well that sounds good. So you said there’s a bunch of laws which affect I guess credit reporting and there’s a fair credit reporting Act fair. That’s Fair Credit
Reporting Act. That was done by Congress in 1971 or 1970. And the reason is, and part of it was that I’m going to give you a little history about credit, credit bureaus. Credit bureau started, Equifax is the biggest of the three and started in 1899. Okay. Wow. They started this whole game of watching people and how they pay. It’s grown into just, I dunno, a trillion dollar business now. But they problem was though, is that in those days is much smaller, of course. And it’s probably mostly East coast and New York and everything. And actually the history goes that they really, where there’s big money, there’s greed usually. And so corruption started coming in. So they found that people could actually pay off people. This is old history and ruin people financially because they could say, Hey, put on his report that he’s lousy and the guy loses his good credit.
Back then you had no recourse. So things like that were going on. So the government finally got involved. See, back in those days, Equifax did the scoring too. All the bureaus are information gatherers. That’s all they do now. In the beginning they would gather information and score you. They can’t do that anymore. Congress got in there and regulated it, and then now they can only give the information. So what happens? Okay, people subscribe to these bureaus and they get their information. So every business in this land probably belongs to one of the big three, and they can buy your report. So they get everything that they know on you, which could be wrong or right, good or bad. So that determines whether they’re going to loan you the money or not. Everybody in this system today of course, has to borrow money. You want to buy a car, you got to borrow money, you want to buy a house, you got to borrow one.
Anything. People now are using credit cards so crazily that they’re buying almost everything on credit. So your credit score is the most important financial factor in your life, bar none. And I’m still amazed how many people won’t even look at it because they’re scared. And I understand that fear. I had that fear myself when I first got into this, but it is not a fearful thing. It’s just information. That’s all it is. So I try to calm people’s nerves about that. It’s just information. It’s not who you are, it’s just what they’ve gathered about you. So now we have all the tools over the years, what you got to do? And what I had to do is learn the game and you got to know the rules to win the game. So I’ve learned all the rules. The rules were created, started back in 1899. They’ve been here that long and they’ve grown over the years. And guess what? Here’s another frustrating thing. They don’t tell us what the rules are. Were you taught this in high school? No. Were you ever taught anywhere in your schooling about credit?
No.
Okay.
No, not at all. Of course not.
No. I’m sorry, but this is why the banks are so rich,
Right? Right. Okay,
I’m going to tell it like it is. This is what I’ve noticed and seen in this business I’ve worked in. It’s a pretty nice setup. Really. Credit card is the greatest money gatherer for banks ever created. And now with the regulations being so wildly loose, I mean you pay up to 25% for a credit card, 25% when I was a young man, that’s usury fees, not today. So how important is your credit score? It’s the most important thing you have in your financial world, period. I don’t know
Who
You are.
So what kind of stuff has the biggest effect on a credit score?
Well, it’s a balancing act. So you have to have good credit and you’ve got to get rid of the bad credit. So most people come in, they need to add good credit and they need to get rid of the bad credit. So through, you brought it up before the Fair Credit Reporting Act, what it states is, is it says it does not matter if the debt is yours or not. It must be accurate. Your file can be right and not accurate. You follow that,
It
Can be correct. Oh, you didn’t pay that bill, but it may not be recorded correctly, and this is the language you use. That’s the most important. I mean, the thing is really long, but that’s the most important thing for us. Credit repair people. So we use that. So we go to them and we say, we don’t think this is correct. So we can challenge. Now let me explain to you why self-serving, of course, but you should go to a specialist about this because guess what, today you don’t talk to people anymore. In the industry, it used to be years and years ago you could talk to somebody. Now it’s all computerized. I don’t know if you’ve heard of that Oscar program. It was created by somebody. Now the credit bureaus use this thing called Oscar. So I have the best and most expensive program on the market that gives me all the language that talks to computers and not to people. So you have to have the right communication. And it gets me when I see things like the bureau saying, oh, you don’t need a credit repair person. Just come to us. We’ll help you. What happens is you’ll send in your words what you want to say about what’s going on, and you’ll get a report back 45 days. It says, sorry, it’s is correct. So what do you do now?
What do you now do? Do
I have a series of six to eight letters that go back to them with different striking questions and No, that isn’t correct. You need to look at this again. And it’s all computer language. So this is my success. I brag about the fact, brag about boast. Those are bad words. I’m proud. Watch out for pride too. But anyway, I’m proud that I’ve got about a 60 to 70% success rate. It’s highest in the industry. I have the best program. I’ve been doing this for 12 years.
So 60 to 70% success rate is really tops. So a lot of people just can’t have their credit fixed
Potentially. There are actually, I read, I always kind of, not always, but I look on the internet and see what’s going on out there, what’s my competition, what’s happening? And I saw one of the national companies said they’re boasting that they get 30%.
Really? Wow.
And I say that’s a failure. So it really, really depends on who you work with in this industry, I promise you. And don’t pay. You pay for what you get, and that’s the
Truth. If
You’re going to go with the cheap guys, you’re going to get cheap work,
Right? Right. Yeah. You get what you pay for. Exactly.
Absolutely. But then again, I’m going to have to say there’s a lot of scammers out there. I don’t want to scare people, but there are, and there’s a guy I know this charging $2,500 to do the credit and they don’t do any more than I do, and I charge so much less than that.
Right, exactly.
I started $99 actually for my fee. That’s my standard. That goes after the negatives, just like the big guys.
Right? Okay.
I think I’m better at it because I do it myself. I’m a mom and pop, my wife and I, and we have one employee. We do it ourselves. I care about what’s going on. And so also what people get when they sign up for my service, they get all my knowledge. That’s really what I have. I have the knowledge of the industry, what to do, what not to do. So many people listen to their friends or something and take the wrong advice and just ruin their credit. You got to be careful of what you do. Everything you do will have an outcome, good or
Bad.
And then I advise them on other things about how to build it from after they leave me and where to go to do certain things. And I give a big service here.
Okay, so you mentioned Experian, and there’s a TransUnion and Equifax, I guess. So are all of these sort of the same to work with or is
One? Yeah. Here’s the deal. Equifax, like I said, opened in 1899. TransUnion, I wrote some numbers down. TransUnion opened in 1968. Experian came in 1980. So why is there three? Because competition in America, they wanted to come in and try to get part of the pie. They all three do the same. They all gather information, but here’s tricky part. One of ’em may have something the other doesn’t. So your score is going to vary through the three at all times. By the way, for your people listeners, your score will vary all the time. Anyway. There’s various little things that happen. Anything that you push forward, it will make a change. Anything that they find will make a change. So it’s a living, breathing thing. Your credit score, it isn’t set. And so that’s what I work with when I come in. I use that fair Federal Trade Commission, the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
So that’s the heart of the credit repair business really is the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
They really created it in a sense, in the form that you see it today. There was things you could do before, but not like now. It’s really, you can really, I’m telling you, I’m confident to say, oh, but I have to say this, by law though, legally, if anybody promises you something in this industry, they’re breaking a law under that California law that states that you cannot promise because you can’t. These bureaus are huge and you can make some dents and you can do a lot of work with them, but you can’t promise what they’re going to report and what your score’s going to be. Because here’s another thing, the credit report, excuse me. Like I said before, bureaus do not create the scores now. So what happens? Well, they buy all these, any banks, mortgage company, I don’t care who it is that’s going to look at you.
Anybody that you’re going to borrow money from is going to look at you and they’re going to pay them for the information. Then they’re going to run it through their own scoring system and there’s hundreds of them. So this is why if you go online, you get a score from let’s say Credit Karma, okay? It’s free scores, it’s a come on company. What they do is they say, Hey, I’ll give you your score for free, but if you want to see anything, you got to pay. So that’s their game. And so people, oh, free scores. People that are not really aware of how all this works goes thinking they’ll go get their score, but that does you no good, just get the score. But you can get that score. So they come in, I use a different system and we bring up and I get all the three reports.
The system I use when a customer I give, first of all, I got to say I give a free consultation. So I do not try to sell on the phone or anything. I want my clients to come into my office. I want them to sit down and I want to show them what’s going on. I’m dead serious about this. I know how I can help people and I want to give them the best. And so they come in, we bring up all three reports. Well, the reporting system I have is going to have a different score than the Karma does Credit Karma. That’s the way it is. If you brought up three more, you’ll get three different. The reason is is they’re running it through different systems. The only true system is called fico. They went public in 1986 and were traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
And what they did was is they formed a program that would trace all of this and that would create a score that’s independent from the bureaus. So the Exchange Commission said, okay, if you’re independent, then you can do that. So they came in, brilliant move and made a ton of money, and now they’re the standard, I think in about 95. Even Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac joined the F I C O. So now they are the standards. So if you want to find out really what most people will see, because most of the major hitters use them, you have to buy their report for $39. But when you come to see me, we’re not interested in that. What we’re interested in is what the information has the bureaus have on you. So I go over that first and then I see what I can do, and I can look at a report now and within 30 seconds know exactly what to do, how to get them up a hundred points.
So if there aren’t a lot of errors in a credit report and the borrower just has a history of not paying their debts or not paying on time, can that somehow be erased or how does that work?
Yes. Here’s the thing. First of all, they make mistakes. I think it’s estimated that 70 to 80% of people in this country have a mistake on their credit report. So we go after those, of course, but we also go after the ones that even are true, are correct. And we have a fairly good success rate of getting those off only because they’re reporting incorrectly. But this is behind the scenes. This is in the computer. When they put the date in, how much was the bill? It could be many things. Really. And so through my letters, legal language, talking to these computers, we force them to check their information and by law they have to correct it. And so far, I have to say they do. I’m quite pleased about that. I’m waiting for the day when they’re going to stop.
So they correct the information and then the debt stays on there, or
No, it falls off. We get them off falls off, and once they fall off, they can’t come back on. By law, this is all that Fair Credit Reporting Act. All these laws came. When that happened, that’s when the credit repair industry really happened. And I didn’t realize that when I met that guy. I didn’t know this was happening. I was under the impression, like I said before, that you can’t do anything about your credit, but that is not true.
So you’re saying that you can get people score up by 100 points
Or
More? Well, how long does that take? Is this a two month process, a year long process? The average?
The average, and of course, I’m not going to say I can get you up a hundred points in six months to eight months, but the average clean and the average balancing your credit takes about six to eight months. And the reason that is, is because by law, the bureaus do not have to answer for 45 days. So every time I send a letter, we have to wait 45 days for it to send the next one. If it could be sent quicker, it’d be a lot faster. But it’s due to their laws, to their rules that they have. So
Are these letters sent via US mail or can you email them these days or
How those get sent over? No, we send ’em through mail.
Wow. US mail, huh? Okay.
Yeah. Still goes through mail.
So you said it might take six, eight months, a year long. So is there a monthly fee that people pay while not?
I charge a monthly fee. I get paid as I work. That is the law. I’m regulated by the state. I’m one of those guys. I’m signed up and I follow the law and the law states that I can only charge as I work. So I charge a monthly fee as I work. How much? It’s $99 to 1 99, something like that? Depends on your report. I have to look at your report. Another reason. Reason. I want you to come into my office. I want to see exactly what it’s going to take,
How much work it’s going to take. So you like to have people come in and meet with you and sit down with you and
Absolutely.
And go over the whole thing. Okay. I
Like to have a relationship with my clients. I feel that I’m here to help in even more than just the basics of cleaning credit. I like to make suggestions to them about where to bank maybe. And I think there’s something to that today. The old banking system isn’t what it used to be.
Well, speaking of that, do you help negotiate with the lenders to reduce their debt or do you do anything like that? Well,
Here’s a funny thing about that used to a long time ago, but guess what? They don’t negotiate anymore. And if they do, I shouldn’t say that. They’ll negotiate some of them, A lot of them won’t. Depends on the amount. If it’s a smaller amount, they’ll just turn you over to collection and pay up. But here’s the trick. The trick is this. They won’t take it off your report. So I tell my clients, let me do my work. Okay? Because even if you pay off, there’s a little tip to your listeners. If you pay it off, don’t think they’re going to take it off. They won’t. I’ve not seen it. That stopped years ago. Now they leave it on, and if you’re going to get an agreement with them, I’ll give you a free tip, get it in writing. If they say yes, have them mail you a copy in writing. You may have to get a lawyer later.
Right, right. Okay, good to know. So I see these things though. I don’t know where I see, but I don’t know. But they say like, Hey, we will negotiate down your credit card debt. You see those things, right? So
Absolutely.
Those are real. Are those a scam or they
Are real? They are real. Yes, absolutely. I don’t do that. But yes, there are companies that will do that. That’s not a scam. They can do that. They’ll get ahold of everybody, work out a payment plan and all that for a fee. They’re kind of expensive. So you’re adding onto your bills.
Does that actually lower your credit score though, or how does that affect your credit score?
It really, it goes from technically on the report. It’ll say in collection to paid less than, and when it says paid less than, it’s just as bad as collection. So your score will not rise.
So
It does nothing for your credit. Let me tell you. If you negotiate and get an agreement, it’ll do nothing for your credit score unless you have them take it off your credit score or your credit report.
The
Only way that your score will rise if you get them to agree and they follow through to take it off your report.
And so you have to negotiate that with them specifically to do that?
Absolutely.
I
Wouldn’t do it without it because it just does no good and for small bills, it is just not worth it. It’s like, gosh, how can I say this? They’re not going to sue you. It’s a game. See where I’m coming from? I’ve been doing this 12 years. It’s a game to me. I know to people out there, I know because I used to be that it’s a money. It’s so serious and so, oh my god in this, but it’s not over here. It’s a game. They write ’em off. They use it for tax purposes. It’s a game. It’s really completely changed my thinking about money and how it works.
Right? So it sounds like if I need my credit, I know some clients who tell me they have really bad credit if I send them to you or somebody else, I mean, there’s really no guarantee that they can get their credit done, right?
Well, listen, I can guarantee that I can get their credit score up if they follow my direction. The only time I can’t really get them up is that they don’t do what I say. I will tell them to do certain things. If they don’t follow that, then chances are their score won’t go up enough to help them. But basically I can do, I’m saying this in respect to my history and my knowledge of what has happened. I can get anybody’s score up and I can get anybody on the track to get over 700. You want to get to 707 hundred’s average now. So you want to get to seven 20 and you want to get to seven 40. How important is that if you’re buying a home between six 40 and seven 40 could mean a hundred thousand dollars to you in the term of the life of the loan, that much money.
That’s really important. Incredibly. Let’s just say that I have a 700 score, and so you’re telling me that even without reducing my debt necessarily, that I can actually get my credit score up to 7 35 or seven
40 possible
To get the best rate possible. Wow. I
Always have to say this. I have to see the report to tell you.
Right? Interesting. I
Have to see what’s hurting you. I have to see it.
It kind of sounds like just as a matter of good financial hygiene, you should go to a credit repair specialist,
Even if you don’t. I wish I would.
I wish I would’ve. I’ll tell you that. I tell the kids today, look, oh no, they don’t have time or something. I’m going, oh my goodness. The importance of this. This should have been taught in school. It should have been taught. I say this all the time, why aren’t they teaching this in high school? There’s two major things in life. There’s love and there’s money. I can’t help you with the love, but I can help you with the money and you know how important money is, and your credit score is your financial character. It’s who you are in the financial world. It is incredibly important. It is said that you should look at your report at least once a year to see if there’s anything changing, any mistakes being made. These are human beings that are running these companies. They make mistakes. Human beings made the computer computers make mistakes.
Right, right. Got it. So a second ago you said that if people don’t do what you tell ’em to do to get their credit raised, that you necessarily can’t help them. So it’s not just I show up at your door and I dump my credit file on you and say, Rick, just take it from here. What kind of things does the creditor have to do?
Well, it is really, I mean, do most of the work. I do 99% of the work, but there are a couple items that I’ll tell you to do. And they’re not tough. It’s going down to a bank. It’s just very simple things that you can do to help yourself. And if you don’t do those, see that’s, like I said, it’s good and bad credit. So I go after the bad. You can’t do anything about that. That’s me. Totally. I go after the bad. But you have to help yourself in getting the good credit now. And I advise people how to do that. And what I do is I email, I talk to my customers through email. I’ll do their every 45 days, I do the update and I use my system. I update everything. The newsletter go out, I email my clients and I say, do this or do that. And there’s really only maybe two, maybe three at the most things I ever asked them to do. And then if they do that, then they’re going to see the next report or for sure the following report, they’re going to see their score just go up.
Wow. Well, that’s good to
Know. There’s just techniques in the industry that we use the good guys.
Right. Interesting. Well, this is a big takeaway for me. I should just go talk to a credit repair, even though I don’t have any major purchases planned or anything like that. Mean, maybe it’s just a good idea.
Well, if I had children now, I would teach them this all the way. I mean, there’s no reason why any human being coming out of high school shouldn’t have if they follow the rules and the directions shouldn’t have perfect credit the rest of their life and save untold amount of money.
And that’s
For everybody on twenties, thirties. I don’t care how old you are, I use my own systems for me and it saves me money.
Right. Okay.
It’s a money saving. It’s the biggest money saving thing you can do.
Wow. That’s very important. I’m actually going to talk to some people about this and just say, Hey, get over it. Don’t be afraid to talk to the credit repair guy. Right?
Fear is the biggest factor. I’ve got all my emails, what do I say? I’m going to bring one up. I say on my email every day. I say, everything you want is on the other side of fear,
George.
Right? Yeah, it
Does say that on your email. Right.
And that’s the truth. And I found out the culprit in this life for us is fear.
And
If we just can rise above that, we can get our dreams, we can get things done that we’ve always wanted to and keeps us from that.
Because everything that you want in life or whatever, it starts between your ears. I mean, your whole entire reality is totally
Encapsulated
In that little space, right? That’s right. And you can choose to be afraid or you can choose not to be afraid and just go for it. You got to vanquish your ego and just say, Hey, I’m just going to take the steps that I need to take and pride. I’m just going to take the steps that I need to take in order to make this happen. And what I find is that when you actually start on the path to whatever it might be, it usually is nowhere near as bad as you had made it out to be because your brain throws up all this stuff. Like this is what’s going to happen. Rick’s going to think I’m a loser.
I
Don’t want somebody going through my credit report. What are they going to say?
I know. I know. And that’s something, honestly, my heart goes out. There’s people come in, I’ve had my clients cry, and I just tell them, no, it’s what they’re saying about you. Oh, yes, you made some mistakes. Who hasn’t made mistakes in this life? My goodness. I mean, life is full of mistakes. If it wasn’t, we’d never grow. We’d never learn. We have to fail to grow. Or unfortunately, between those two years, if you decide you’re a loser, then that’s a bad situation. I’ve been there before. I know what it’s like.
You write your own story, you write your own story. Yeah, that’s right. Absolutely.
That’s the key to life.
Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.
That’s right. It’s that positive attitude. And it just took me through my life. It took growing up and living and experiencing over and over and just growing. I decided to, I’m going to try to figure it out and not just say I’m a loser or I don’t know what I’m doing or anything. No, you know what? It’s ignorance that keeps us back. And ignorance is great. Stupidity iss not because that means you can’t learn. Ignorance means you just don’t know. So here’s the key. You find out and with the internet today, my goodness, you just push in what you want to know about and usually it comes up a bunch of information.
Information’s
King in this life,
Right? Well, I find because I’m in real estate and I put out a tremendous amount of information. So there’s one thing it’s knowing, and the other thing is putting it all together in the actual doing of it. And that’s where the difference is between someone Googling how to decrease, increase their credit score versus hiring somebody like you who’s done it a thousand times or 10,000 times the knowledge. And then there’s the scale and the practice.
Well, today, in this day and age, certainly you have to have a professional do it because of all the laws and all the things that are in this world today. I mean, my goodness, you got to have somebody that’s really gone through it and they know I can get there 10 times faster than someone else. If you want to get to where I can go in six months, then you’re going to have to learn what I’ve learned and that’ll take you
Right. Years. So do attorneys ever get involved in this kind of thing? Do you? Do they need to get involved? Yes.
There is a time an attorney will get involved, but it’s only when they are reporting wrong information and they won’t correct it. Then we get an attorney involved. But it’s not very often. They usually will correct it. I got to give it to them. They do respond usually. Not always,
But
Yes. But if you go to it, but here’s the thing about, and again, a pet little P for me, and that is some attorneys say, I’ll fix your credit, and what they do is call me.
Right? Exactly. Right.
Here’s the thing too that I tell younger folks and I say, listen, you know how important your credit is, your credit score. If something happens in your life and you have to get some money, wouldn’t you like to be able to do it? What would it feel like to you if you were laying in bed at night and you had to get $10,000 and you had no way to get it, how would you feel? What if you had credit score to where you could just go down to a bank and say, I need this. And they said, yes, sir. Here it is.
Yes, sir. Right away.
Yeah. What do you need? Oh, okay. Now that’s based, of course, your score and your income and your de ratio, that’s all balanced out. When they come and see me, I get them. I let them understand exactly how it works and what they got to have. And when they go in, I can tell them, you will get approved. Does everybody know that if they went down today, would I get approved? That’s a scary proposition, right?
Do you offer a two for one deal? Do you offer a two for one deal, like husband and wife? Can they both get in there? I
Do, I do. Do I give half off to the spouse?
Okay.
Yeah.
Well that’s important to know.
Yeah.
Alright, two for one. One, okay, that’s really good to know. So also, you mean you’re talking about how many credit cards, what’s a good number of credit cards to have? I mean, is it like five or one or,
Well, it depends on your age, but you should have five, almost
48. So I should have How many
You should have five. How many do you have?
So I have my American Express card, and then I have three other credit cards.
I would get two more,
Two more
Really?
Okay. And then just not use,
Remember, now here’s the thing the banks want, this is how the banks think of it. They want you to have all this credit, but they don’t want you to use it.
Now,
That’s the real way to think about credit. So you want to have six cards. I mean, what’s your age? May I ask?
I’m 48 in January.
Alright, 48. Then you should probably have about eight maybe.
Really?
I mean overall, those years they’d like to see you add another card here and there, right?
Right. But
Five is critical.
Five is critical.
Okay,
I’m going to go get another credit card or two. So now, is it also critical to have a really high limit on the credit cards or does that not matter?
Well, it only matters if you’re having a debt ratio problem. If you’re buying a lot on one card, but you have a lot of credit on another card, it’ll kind of balance it out better. But the true fact is that you should be at 30% or below on every individual card debt ratio.
So
That only comes to play. See, here’s the thing about credit. This is where it gets difficult. I can tell you the five basic things that I have, but after that, there’s 28 points of interest that the bureaus look at or the scoring companies look at. So it’s not simple. I have to look at each item on their report to see if it affects them in other areas. So it’s much more complicated than as they would like to tell you. So it’s a balancing act. It’s all a balancing act. And that’s why I have to see the report to see what I can do.
Right
Now, I’ve been doing it long enough now that I can just glance over it and see what has to be done.
Do you charge for an initial consultation or if I show up free, does it running a credit report Cost money, isn’t that?
Well, I have a system where it costs $1 and you get your three credit reports for free. For $1. Free for $1, and then free for
$1. That’s pretty close
To free for $1 anyway. It’s a dollar for two weeks. And so we do the initial consultation on that. If you don’t go forward with me, then you just cancel the service. But it’s the easiest way to do it.
And what’s the highest credit score you’ve ever been able to get anyone to?
Oh, I’ve gotten them up to seven 90.
Seven 90, huh?
Yeah.
Wow.
After that, it’s just, it’s got to be history. You just got to keep going for a long time.
Right? Seven
90, and that was the person that came in was six 80 or six 50. Six 60.
Really? So
I can get ’em about a hundred, 120 at times. But again, I have to always say, if they don’t follow what my program is, then I won’t be able to do that.
But
I will tell you this, I can promise you this. I can get any client on the way to 700 and they will reach it within two years. Even if they’re in the four hundreds. They have to have my services, do my complete cleaning service. Let me get them balanced and then don’t blow it. I’ll tell you the biggest payment history, right? 35%, that’s the one they would go after. Guess what? Most people do? They pay late. Guess what? The golden rule is?
Never pay late.
Don’t pay late. So I help them with systems to not do that in the future. So they don’t have to worry about that. And so that’s the biggest thing. But then, well,
You know what? It sounds like you need to make an info product and sell it on the internet.
Wow. That’d be something. It
Sounds like you have so much knowledge. What a great program that would be, right?
Yeah. I could lay it down. I could. Yes. You
Had a nice
Individual. I could teach a class to where if you took notes and studied, you’d know it
Would never be as good as somebody going to you. But not everyone lives in the Bay Area. They can’t all come to
You. No, of course not.
So it would be a way to help a lot more people.
Well, that’s true.
We should
Talk about that. If you know somebody that’s an investor that wants to come and talk to me about it, I’ll talk about it. Alright,
Well we’re in the right place. This is Silicon Valley where dreams like that or made reality, right? Credit repair university.com.
Well, as you know, I mean the medium price house in San Jose now is like 1.2. Yeah,
I sold one over there in San Jose for $1.26 million, three bedrooms, two bathrooms, 1,148 square feet.
Unbelievable.
Not updated. Just original stock.
19. I mean, to me it’s because I come from Merced and my whole history till I was 40 or whatever. And it’s insanity to me, but it is what it is. And here we are.
It’s poor land use planning. I mean, the Bay Area has a hard time getting over its suburban history. I mean, it’s not like New York City or Manhattan where they build up and they went dense. Which it is kind of a weird thing because a lot of places in Manhattan or New York are very, very livable. I mean, they’re not like an urban jungle. They’re really nice places to live. And I mean, yeah, the average per square foot per human is obviously much lower than it is in a neighborhood full of tract homes. But there’s a lot of good things that come with higher density that people just ignore. So the Bay Area needs to get over that, I think. And that’s another topic. We’re off topic. We’re talking about
Federal. We are. But it’s all interesting. I tell you, this whole economic game that we have here is, it’s really interesting. If you’re prone for that kind of thing, there’s so many things to learn here.
Right? Well, I feel like I could talk to you forever, but I got to wrap it up. So listen, before I do, is there anything that I didn’t ask you that I should have asked you?
Well, I think I told a lot. I think I said a lot. I will just reiterate what I said before is don’t let fear stop you. If I would say one thing to this nation, I would say people go get your credit report and talk to some knowledgeable person about it. It will have an effect on your life. It’s more than you realize.
Well, yeah. I mean when you put it like that, a hundred thousand dollars or $200,000 or whatever over the course of your life, 30 years goes buying in a blink.
Yes. And I mean, I say it all the time, banks aren’t going to like me, but that’s why the banks are so rich, my friend. That’s why they got all the money.
They’re counting on you not being very savvy.
Absolutely. They’re counting on it. They’ve made it that way. I’m sorry, but that’s how I see it. I’ve been in this long enough where I see they didn’t teach us the rules. They made the rules, and people are blowing the rules every day of their life and it’s costing them money that they don’t even realize.
Right. Alright, well listen, I learned a whole bunch in our conversation now. How can people get ahold of you? What’s the best way to reach you and find out more about you?
Well, okay, my phone number is four oh eight two nine three 8,000. I answer the phone myself. How about that? The owner. Wow. And my website is ww.credit repair bay area.com. In those two ways, they can get to me easily.
Yeah,
That’s pretty. I do free consultations. I’ll set up an appointment. I prefer you to come in. It’s not that I can’t do it on the phone, I can easily do it over the phone, but if you don’t have the time, I like to talk to my clients. I get kind of personal about this. I really give them a lot of information and I can’t do that over the phone or by email. They’ll get more out it. But if you just can’t get here, then give me a call or contact me through my website and I can do it over the phone as much as I do in my office.
Well, where is your office if people wanted to go and meet you?
Well, that’s true. The reason I don’t push that so much is because I do it by appointment. I set it up by appointment and I’m at 1172 Murphy Avenue and that’s in San Jose. It’s off Broka where Broka meets Oakland Road. If you’re coming from the airport on Broka, you cross Oakland Road that turns into Murphy Avenue and I’m right on the right first driveway to the right and my building’s on the left-hand side and it’s called Echo Executive Center. It’s a church, echo Church is here. It’s big church, but I’m in their building. I love working here. It’s a very nice environment and so it’s called Echo Executive Center.
That’s a great location. That’s really central, easy to find, easy to get on off the freeway.
Usually people don’t have a problem getting here. Yeah,
Yeah, yeah. No, it’s super easy. My brother lives not too far from there. He lives off Oakland Road also in San Jose. I know right
Where that is. I hear that all the time. I’m not too far from you.
So do you have regular office hours? I mean, are you nine to five Monday through
Friday? I don’t, well, I do seminars and things, so I do other things too, but I make it by, but my hours basically 10 to five, but I might not be at my desk when you come in. If you come in, if you’re doing a walk-in, it’s best to call me.
Rick, I want to thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy day to share all, well, not all that, but a little
Tiny
Sliver, at
Least what the important stuff for sure.
The
Basics
About credit repair, I really appreciate it and I’m inspired. I think I want to have my credit looked at, right? I mean, I already have a house. They have a car, but you never know. You never know when you might need it, so
Isn’t why you look at it. You look at it to save money
Right now. I understand. Alright, well
Rick, thank you so much. We’ll, another I’ll quick. One last one. Oh, okay. A person came in and was paying 20 something percent for their car because it was actually a work vehicle and they just had a credit. That was the only thing they could get within just a couple months. Got them to a point where I told them where to go and they got it refinanced for 1.9 and saved $500 a month. Wow. How dramatic is that? That’s just on a vehicle.
Wow. That is dramatic. That is dramatic.
That’s how important this is. Alright, my friend.
I’m convinced. Okay, Rick, we’ll talk again soon and thank you so much.
Okay, Sebastian. Thank you.
All right. That wraps up episode 29 of the Beta Bay podcast. I hope you got a lot out of my conversation with Rick Jackson. I know I did. I really feel like I need to go down and have a consultation with him and see what I can do about cleaning up my own credit report. I mean, if there are a lot of errors on there, you certainly want to have them removed because it will mean that you’ll have lower borrowing costs and that could really contribute substantially to your own financial wellbeing. Hey, as always, this episode of the Be to Bay podcast is sponsored by savvy seller seminar.com. That’s right. Go to savvy seller seminar.com and sign up to attend my free seller seminar to be held January 24th, 2019 at the best Western Seacliff Inn in beautiful Aptos, California. We’ll cover everything you need to know in order to get your home sold quickly, easily, with the least amount of hassle and risk, and it need not be said, but for the very highest price possible. Hey, it’s going to be a fun evening. It’s going to be about 90 minutes. We’ll have some snacks, some beverages, and hey, I’ll do your entertainment. So you already know it’s going to be a good time. Alright, thanks so much. Stay tuned for the next episode of the podcast.
