How do you think the rich got to where they are?  Most prosperous entrepreneurs, investors and business professionals can credit their wealth to a long, patient system of saving and investing.  And they often hire the best possible attorneys to handle their taxes.

That’s because they know that the secret to earning is saving.  So if you want to save more of your hard-earned money and put it toward something useful, follow in their footsteps and start taking advantage of tax deductions and tax credits.

What is a Deduction?

A deduction is way of reducing the amount of your income that’s taxable.  That means if you have spent $1,000 on deductable expenses, you can write it off and receive a refund from the federal government.  The amount you receive is based on your tax bracket.  If, for example, your tax bracket is 28%, you should be eligible to receive 28 cents for every deducted dollar.

…and a Credit?

A credit is much more valuable than a deduction because it’s equivalent to every dollar you paid in taxes.  It’s simple: for every dollar you overpaid, you’ll be refunded in full.

You’d be surprised at how many people miss out on these money-saving (or money-earning) opportunities—so don’t be one of them.  It’s your money, go and get it back!

10 Deductions and Credits You Can’t Afford to Miss

1. Out-of-pocket Charity: you can write of all the little expenses related to good works.  Whether you spent money on art supplies for disabled children, gassed up your car to drive the blind, or donated your furniture to the needy, taking advantage of this deduction is a great way to earn.

2. Job-related Move: If you’ve changed residence to take a new job, any expenses incurred could be deducted. This includes travel expenses, moving costs, fuel, parking fees and tools.

3. Military Travel: National Guardsmen and Military Reservists may receive a deduction for travel to and from drills and meetings. It covers travel, lodging and food expenses.

4. New Vehicle Purchase: If you purchased a new car, truck, motor home or motorcycle after February 16, 2009 (and before the end of the year), you’ll be eligible to receive a refund on the sales tax paid on vehicles up to $49,500.

5. Jury Fees: If your employer paid you wages while you served in jury duty, you will have to hand over your  jury pay to that employer.  This expense can be written of as jury fees.

6. American Opportunity Credit: This one is for parents of college students.  If your child is a college student (applies only to first 4 years of college) you can get a rebate of up to $2,500 for each qualifying child.

7. Work-pay: You can automatically receive a refund for up to 6.2% of your earned income.  This refund caps out at $400-800$.

8. Energy-saving Home-improvements: 30% of the expenses you paid to perform energy-saving home-improvements can be returned to you.  This includes the costs of certain skylights, windows and outside doors, high- efficiency furnaces, water heaters and central air conditioning.

9. Child Care: Up to $5,000 can be returned to you for expenses accrued to pay for child care throughout the entire tax year.

10. First-time homebuyers: If you bought your first home after November 6, 2009, or you’ve owned a home for 5 to 8 years before purchasing another, you can receive up to $8,000 in returned tax payments

Here are Some Other Valuable Deductions:      

• Loan Interest
• Medical/dental expenses
• Union fees
• Miscellaneous expenses (this is the actual title)
• Casualty, theft, and gambling losses (yes, gambling losses)

Remember, saving money truly is earning.  In addition to your standard budgeting system, taking advantage of tax credits and deductions is one of the very best ways to gain personal wealth, put your money where it matters, and start living wiser.  Getting a return on this money is also a great way to get out of debt, optimize your credit and make some worthy investments.

TIP: For those of you that owe the federal government and don’t receive tax returns. Make sure you file every year and TAKE ADVANTAGE OF AS MANY DEDUCTIONS AND CREDITS AS YOU ARE ELLIGIBLE FOR.  This money will help you pay off your federal debt faster.

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This is a question we received via email that we thought would be helpful to many others:

“I was divorced from my husband last year.  At that time, the court ordered him to make payments on our truck since it was his work vehicle and he was the primary user.  That was about the last I’d heard anything about that situation until recently.  I recevied a collections notice from the bank that issued the auto loan.  There is a $4,000 balance and apparently I’m being held responsible for paying it off.  This makes very little sense being as the court made my ex responsible for the truck.  Is this something I can dispute?”

Can you see why this is a good question?  Many people fall under the asumption that they are no longer responsible for a debt if the court passes responsiblity to an ex-spouse.  While the court’s judgment is valid for it’s own cause–that is, ensuring a fair seperation and division of finanical obligations–unfortunately, the court order does not negate the original contracts with your creditors.  Any joint accounts will be treated as such by creditors, with or without a court judgment.

Unfortunately, you will be held responsible for any debt you incurred together and this is something that would probably be pointless to dispute.

To avoid situations like this, it’s a general rule of thumb to sell all joint assets before the divorce, and use the capitol to pay off joint debts.  Another option is to transfer ownership of property (refinacing your home or vehicle in just one party’s name, for example) before the divorce so that those particular obligations are no longer shared.

Dealing with credit and debt problems after divorce is common, and can cause high levels of unwanted stress and complication.  The important thing to remembr during such times is to keep your cool and don’t do anything irrational, such as walking away from property you still partially own.  This is a great way to ruin your credit.  There are ways to disassociate yourself with these kinds of financial reponsibilities–but if you don’t take care of them before the divorce is final, you may just find yourself in trouble.

As always, you can contact one of our credit experts if you have any more questions about credit repair or credit and divorce.

Related posts:

1. Ask MyCreditGroup: Divorce and Debt. Who Pays?
2. 5 Common Credit Mistakes: Not Having Enough Credit (part 4)

Over the weekend, a mechanic friend was griping about not having any time away from work.  So I reminded him that he gets every weekend off, and has for years.  “That’s not what I mean,” he said.  “Every weekend I’m doin’ side jobs for family, friends and neighbors.  I can’t go a single day without someone askin’ me for help.  Sure, every weekend comes along, but every weekend I’m too busy helpin’ people to enjoy it.”

My response?  “Join the club.” 

It seems like it doesn’t matter what you do—if you’re good at it, people are going to need your help.  And there’s nothing wrong with that.  It’s called being a professional.  And it really means a lot to others—even if they don’t always show it.  So I have no problem with it.  I even enjoy it.

But sometimes, people tend to need things that just can’t be done.  I don’t know how many times I’ve been asked for help that I can’t provide.  This usually happens when it comes to fast credit repair and fast debt relief. 

People, for some reason, tend to think that there’s some kind of magic to these services—that you can somehow fix a lifetime’s worth of financial problems with the simple snap of a finger.  And while there may be some mighty effective and even “speedy” solutions, there’s never a guarantee that the process will ever be “fast” or “simple.”

So I got into the habit of telling people that I don’t know of any “fast” solution, but that I do know of the fastest solution. The fastest solution,” I say, “is doing it right.” 

When it comes down to it, there’s a lot of ways to fix your credit and get out of debt.  Some companies claim they can do it fast.  And many say it’s easy.  But what are you looking for?  A fast solution, or a real solution? 

The point is that debt relief is vital to your financial health, and it may not be wise to go out shopping for the “fast” or” easy” way out of debt.  If you’re serious about being debt-free, then it’s more important to worry about what works rather than what’s fast. Get it?

So don’t be fooled by the companies that promise fast and easy service.  You know better than that.  Real credit problems require time and patience, and fast solutions are not always the most realistic. 

So if you want some advice, I’d be happy to help: 

Before you start looking around for the best debt relief or credit repair service, remember the old saying— you get what you pay for.

Related posts:

1. Fix Credit: Quick Solutions Aren’t Always Best
2. Solutions for Debt Relief: Ask Yedda

I’ll understand if you’re unsure about the title.  Breakfast cereal.  The FTC.  Holy war?  It’s ridiculous.  But that’s the news.  The FTC is hell-bent on “conditioning” the breakfast cereal industry so that consumers can make fair and reasonable decisions about…well, cereal. 

So far Kellogg’s, Whole Foods and General Mills—the world’s leading cereal companies—have all come under recent fire from the FTC, and have been backed into making “improvements” to their marketing systems (these “improvements” are primarily geared toward advertising and product disclaimers). 

And that all sounds pretty familiar.  The FTC has recently clenched the credit repair industry for similar reasons.  For example, we’ve got to be ever-mindful in this industry to avoid the promise of specific results when it comes to credit repair services.  We cannot give legal advice.  We must provide our customers with a written statement of their “credit repair rights.”  And there are a boatload of other rules and regulations we must follow in order to help “protect” consumers from unfair or abusive practices.

While we support the FTC in these kinds of regulatory enforcements, we’re finding that there’s an entire field of consumer protection that’s being completely overlooked—consumer education.  We (and the FTC) can try to help with consumer protection until we’re red in the face, but more than often, the biggest problems people face during the credit repair process are caused by assumption, confusion, or just a simple lack of knowledge. 

Hey—we didn’t learn this stuff in school.  While studies in foreign languages and even liberal arts are now required courses in most high schools (at least for college acceptance), the realm of financial management is being virtually ignored by almost all public educational facilities.  Why? Isn’t it clear that we—as consumers, as a society, as the leading populace in the entire world—are in dire need of knowledge about credit, finances and economic responsibility? 

The FTC can certainly help with this.  By providing more educational resources, strengthening the qualification standards of credit repair companies and financial counseling services, and developing a more interactive system of financial training, the FTC can take consumer protection to a much higher level.  Let’s face it.  We need to know how to be more responsible with our money. Making sure our Captain Crunch has the appropriate disclaimers just doesn’t seem as important…does it?

We haven’t given up, but it’s really getting harder and harder to defend the credit repair industry.  There’s an overwhelming level of complaints, rip-off reports, lawsuits and all-out scams.  It definitely makes one wonder: is credit repair a truly legitimate industry?  And as much as I’d like to assure you that it is, it’s hard to imagine that anyone would believe it. 

But here’s a fact: you can improve your credit.  You can rectify your financial mistakes.  You can make a total difference to your credit profile and rise above the damage you’ve caused in the past.  We can’t speak for the industry as a whole, and we surely can’t promise solutions to each and every credit problem, but we can do our best to help restore your credit and we can promise a commitment to educating the consumers who are still willing to put some trust into our service.

If you’re interested in learning more about the FTC and consumer protection, check out their website.  Maybe you’ll discover how the FTC is reforming your breakfast experience to make it more fair, safe and reasonable.  But if you’re interested in learning more about credit repair, credit repair laws, or what you can do to optimize your financial situation, then give us a call.  We’d definitely like to help.

Related posts:

1. Avoid Being Scammed by Credit Repair Companies
2. Why the Credit Repair Industry is a Disappointment

We are always looking for new ways to communicate and share information.  A great way to do that these days, as you proabably know, is social media networks and blogging sites.  And you’ll find us on most of the useful ones; Twitter, Facebook, Blogger, etc.  They’re good networking environments–and we’ve used them to get the word out about debt relief and credit repair to tens-of-thousands of people.

Today we’re excited to talk about another cool spot on the web that’s new to us: Yedda.  What makes Yedda unique? Yedda is a social networking site that that’s based around Q&A sharing.  Members of Yedda input questions that are catagorized and literally mass-emailed to other users with similar interests and expertise.  Sound cool? It is. 

It’s always nice to help others.  We especially enjoy helping people with there finaincial challenges, so it was great to get our first email from Yedda.  Our question of the day was about debt relief–one our favorite topics:

“My husband and I are thinking about using a debt consolidation company to help us pay off our credit card debts by making one payment monthly.  Is this a good idea using debt consolidation companies? ANY BENEFITS AND WHAT ARE THE CONS?  Thanks.”

Well, we’ve already answered this question for our user(and so did many others!), but we thought we’d keep you in the loop and answer it here on our blog.

In our opinion, debt-consolidation is rarely the best way to resolve debt problems.  It work’s like this:

1. You pay a debt-consolidation firm (too much) money
2. They call your creditors to tell them you’ll be be making small monthly payments
3. You then begin making payments–usually very small payments because your money is split up between so many different creditors
4. Meanwhile, you’re being charged interest and late fees that keep your balance going up
5. Because your payments are so small, they are ususally applied, for the most part, toward your ever-growing interest charges.  As a result, you’ll probably realize after months (or sometimes years) of payments that you’ve hardly made a dent in your original balance.

Debt consolidaion is usually a highly expensive and time-consuming approach to debt relief.  It’s recommended, in most situations, to negotiate a debt settlement instead. Debt settlement is an easier, more sufficient and much cheaper way to resolve unpaid debts–and anyone can do it.

So there you have it.  Yedda.  A new way to ask questions, get answers, and keep in touch with the experts and know-it-alls in your field of interest.  Get help. Help others.  And have fun.

If you want to learn more about debt relief or credit repair, contact a certified specialist at My Credit Group (we still answer questions, too!).

Related posts:

1. Fast Solutions to Debt?
2. Cash For Clunkers – More Proof We Never Learn
3. Should You Invest in Savings or Pay Off Your Debt?

Everyone’s looking for fast solutions to bad credit.  And consequently, many of today’s credit repair companies are promising fast & easy service.  But do these services provide realistic, effective solutions to credit problems?  Probably not.  And that’s because most of these companies attempt to quickly clean up credit reports by mass-mailing generic dispute letters.  And for those of us that are interested in legitimate credit restoration, dispute letters alone will not get the job done.

Here’s why Dispute Letters are “Fast” and “Easy”

First of all, what is meant by fast? Do people actually expect to reverse a lifetime’s worth of credit problems in a few weeks or months?  And second, by easy do we mean dishonest?  Let’s face it.  It’s going to take some work to restore your credit. 

Attempting to dispute your debt away won’t take long.  And printing a handful of generic dispute letters is far from difficult.  But like many other things in life: you get what you pay for.  And if you’re paying for ineffective credit repair services, that, unfortunately, is most likely all you’re going to get.

I’ll Say It Again—You Get What You Pay For

So any company that offers quick & easy solutions is probably going to be a bad choice.  Sending dispute letters may be an effective way to fix credit report errors, but everything else—unpaid debts, for example—will take some time to resolve. 

If you want the best possible results with fixing your credit, find a company that’s capable of addressing a wide range of credit situations using a straightforward and honest approach.  It may take a little longer, and it may be a challenge, but that is the right way to do it.  And if you’re serious about turning things around, putting forth a little more time and energy is definitely worth the effort.

Related posts:

1. Fast Solutions to Debt?
2. Fix Credit Errors: What Does It Mean?
3. A Fool-proof Way to Fix Bad Credit
4. Credit Repair: It’s More than Removing Negative Items
5. Solutions for Debt Relief: Ask Yedda

In the credit repair business, we often encounter people who say they want to fix their credit without removing negative items.  That’s probably because they know you’re not supposed to dispute accurate credit report information and that there are other, more realistic ways to solve credit problems.

Recently, however, we came across a client who was only interested in disputing.  And while there are many different ways to approach credit and debt problems, this particular person had no interest.  “Just dispute it all,” he said. 

Now, the problem with that, of course, is that the client intended to dispute negative items which were known to be accurate.  It was disappointing to hear of such intentions, as we know well how dangerous frivolous disputes can be (they can actually get you sued).  But the most disturbing part was the realization that people are simply misinformed about credit repair. 

Credit repair involves much more than dispute letters.  And sadly, many credit repair services are doing nothing beyond.  This, of course, helps to misdirect consumers who are often in dire need of financial help, and it also helps credit repair—a genuinely valuable process—gain a bad reputation.
So why are people so hung up on disputing?

Disputing, on the surface, is certainly a good way to remove negative items from credit reports.  It’s easy, and you can usually get results pretty quick.  But if you really looked into it, you’d probably see that disputing works great only when it’s done appropriately. 

Disputing accurate information can backfire—and it usually does.  Accurate items that are disputed and removed will often be re-entered onto the credit report.  And in some cases, you can find yourself in court after bringing your debt to the attention of collection agencies and/or creditors.  So why bother?  If you have errors on your report that you want corrected or removed, disputing might be the best solution.  But for everything else, there really are better ways to do it.

The message here is simple:

1. Disputes work great in the right circumstances
2. Disputes can do more harm than good in the wrong circumstances
3. There are realistic and effective ways to solve other kinds of credit problems

You can help stop the cycle of misleading credit repair companies by educating yourself on the process.  Get involved.  Ask questions.  Know your rights, and know the best options available to make credit improvements.  And always remember:  there really is more to credit repair than removing negative items.

Related posts:

1. Can I repair My Credit With Disputes Alone?
2. A Fool-proof Way to Fix Bad Credit
3. Everybody Remain Calm. It’s Only the New Client Login.
4. Can Credit Repair Get You Sued?
5. Disputing Collections: A Step by Step Guide

This guy had goals. and while his friends may have laughed and ridiculed, he was determined to look like the grape guy from fruit-of-the-loom. Way to go, buddy! You did it!

We love success stories.  And we’ve heard alot of them in the credit repair business.  But every once in a while someone comes along who redefiines success.  

We’ve seen credit scores go from the low 500’s to the mid 700’s in just months.  We’ve seen insurmountable debts reduced by as much as 70%.  And we’ve seen the worst imaginable credit reports qualify for mortgage loans.  Yes, we’ve seen a lot of great things around here, but we’re still waiting to see you.  

What are your goals and how can we help you achieve them?  If you’re willing to work hard and do whatever it takes to improve your credit, we can help you succeed.  Credit repair may not always be easy, but it’s worked for tens of thousands of people with bad credit.  And it can work for you, too. 

Call us today and find out how you can get started on the road to success.

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This guy had goals.  And while his friends may have laughed and riduculed, he was 100%determined to look like the grape guy from fruit-of-the-loom.  Way to go, buddy!  You did it!

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Are you wondering why the credit repair industry seems to lug around a bad reputation?  Are you curious about what these “credit experts” are actually doing to fix credit scores?  Maybe you’d have more confidence in credit repair if you just knew what to expect.  After all, if you’re in need of credit repair, chances are you can’t afford to hire the wrong company for help—your time and money are on the line. 

The truth is, there’s no magic to fixing credit.  There’s no trick, no secret, no scam and no special science—it’s actually very straightforward and simple.  So if you’re ready to resolve your credit problems and start turning things around, here are 5 easy (and proven-to-be-effective) ways to improve your credit and start restoring your financial health…

1. Correct your credit report—if there are any mistakes on your credit report, they’re probably hurting your score.  Inaccurate collections, for example, can hurt your score by up to 50 points or more.  But if the report is genuinely inaccurate, it shouldn’t be difficult to fix by sending a debt validation letter.  And doing so is one good way to raise your score.

2. Pay down credit cards—having high credit balances is another way to bog down your score.  Pay them down.  The more debt you have, the more of a risk you are to lenders, and the lower your score will be.

3. Open new credit cards—not having enough credit can also affect your score.  While there’s no exact recipe for good credit, having the proper number of cards (3 is often recommended) along with the right combination of credit (installment, revolving and open) will help you to optimize your score.

4. Pay your bills on time—we all know how late-payments can hurt your credit score.  So the best way to avoid this damage is to make sure you always pay on time.  Remember, late-payments are one thing that’s seriously considered when lenders try determine your credit worthiness, so steer clear of this pitfall by being prompt with each and every one of your payments.

5. Age your credit—time has a great reputation for curing all.  And this is even true for credit repair.  One of the very best ways you can effectively raise your credit score is by aging your existing credit.  This, of course, may require that you keep the right number of cards and the right mixture of credit, pay your bills on time every month, and never spend more than you can afford to pay.  With time, you’ll probably see a noticeable improvement to your credit score. 

It’s true— there’s no magic to fixing your credit score.  But it’s never going to happen if you don’t take the first step.  It’s unfortunate that people have a hard time putting faith into credit repair, but understanding the process and taking the appropriate steps is the best way to ensure success.

Related posts:

1. Stop Dreaming and Start Fixing Your Credit
2. How to Preserve Your Credit While Looking for a Job