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Posts Tagged ‘Family Finances’

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Q: I Have a School Loan for Me and My Daughter from 1994. I Have Paid Interest Only and Currently the Balance is $68,000+. My Monthly Payment is $375. I Have Deferred Payments at Least Twice the Past 4 Years. What Options Do I Have Other Than Walking Away From the Loan?

A: Unfortunately, student loans aren’t like mortgage debt. You can’t simply “walk away” from student loans — at least not without very, very severe consequences, and not without those loans haunting you, literally, for the rest of your life. You see, student loans have no “statute of limitations.” So your lenders (whether private lenders or the federal government) can come after you and/or your daughter forever to try to collect. Read this article on how to pay student loans fast, and the links on these posts on student loans too, for some ideas about how to eliminate that student loan debt.

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Your FICO credit scores – like all credit scores – are based on the underlying data and information that is contained in your credit files with the “Big 3” credit bureaus: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. According to Fair Isaac, the company that created the three-digit FICO scores (which range from 300 to 850 points), in order to have a FICO score generated for you, your credit history must contain at least three things:

•    a minimum of one credit account that has been open for six months or longer
•    at least one account that is “undisputed” and that has been reported to a credit bureau during the past six months
•    an absence of any notation in your credit files that you are “deceased” or that an account you are associated with belongs to a deceased person

Some Issues Are Out of Your Control

Note that if you recently began establishing a credit history, there could be delays in you being assigned a credit score. Additionally, there are several factors outside of your control that may impact your ability to have a credit score generated. For example, assume you opened a credit card account six months ago. You may not yet have a FICO credit score because it’s possible that the credit card company took two or three months to actually report your account to the credit bureaus.

Additionally, there’s a good chance that you will not have a credit score if you have ever been listed as a co-signer or authorized user on a credit report, and the person with whom you were a co-signer/authorized user has died. In such a case, that person’s credit history would note that they are deceased. Additionally, the account you shared with that person would also reflect that it belonged to a deceased individual, which could impact you.

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Question: I am 24 years old and my credit is not too spectacular.  Most of the accounts on my credit reports are things I have done to myself, but the other half (and the most expensive portion of my debt) was done by an immediate family member who knows my social security number and has put cable, electric and telephones in my name and did not pay the bill. I don’t want to get my family member in trouble but I am not sure what to do?

Answer: You should start by taking control of your finances and being honest about what is going on. You are the victim of identity theft, pure and simple. And it’s well past time you started letting others know that you did not authorize or open those utility accounts and that you are not responsible for them, period. End of story. Start monitoring your credit every month to make sure nothing else unexpected pops up there. Put a credit freeze and a credit alert on your credit reports to prevent further damage from this person who has blatantly taken advantage of you.

Lastly, you need to confront this person directly. It doesn’t matter if that person is a “close” family member. I don’t care if it’s your sister, a cousin – or even your mother. Let this individual know that they have totally crossed the line and damaged your finances and credit rating in a way that is completely unfair, disrespectful to you, and that has long-lasting implications. Tell the person that they have exactly 1 week to contact every creditor in which they used your name to cut off service in your name — and put it in their name.

If that person’s credit is bad (which I suspect it is) and they can’t get a phone, electric service or cable in their own name, that’s their issue to deal with; not yours. A week’s time is plenty of notice for them to take action. Tell them that if they don’t handle it in a week, you will be forced to contact those utilities directly and advise them of the situation. Hopefully, you will be stern and straight-forward enough in your approach to this person that he/she will know that you mean business. I’m not saying that you have to turn the person in (although they do deserve it). But neither should you be held continually responsible for someone else’s financial mess.

If the person doesn’t act quickly, and follow through as you’ve told them to do, don’t hesitate to get those services cut off. If push comes to shove, and you “have to” tell who the culprit is, I would go ahead and do it. Why would you go through unwarranted financial stress for this person when clearly they’ve shown you absolutely no personal or financial consideration whatsoever? – Lynnette Khalfani-Cox, The Money Coach

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