Welcome to Elevate with Elsner. Join us for inspiring conversations with individuals who have transformed their lives and are making a difference through the work that they do. And now, here's your host, Blake Elsner.

Welcome back to another episode of Elevate with Elsner, the podcast where we share passion and impact stories that inspire and elevate your life. I'm your host, Blake Elsner, and today we're diving into financial empowerment with a guest who knows the ins and outs of building credit and creating financial freedom. Joining me today is Ryan Alexander, the mastermind behind iteachcredit.com. Ryan has helped countless individuals take control of their financial futures by destroying credit and providing actionable steps for success. Whether you're starting from scratch or looking to fine tune your financial strategy, Ryan's Insight is sure to inspire and elevate your mindset. So in this episode, we're going to discuss the importance of credit education, common mistakes people make, and practical steps to build, repair, and maintain excellent credit. So without further ado, welcome.

Blake Elsner

Thanks Blake. I appreciate you having me on here. This is awesome.

Ryan Alexander

Yeah, absolutely. So obviously, um, to be passionate about credit, I feel like you had to be broke at one point, right? So give us a little history about how you're in the credit industry.

Sure. So I'm going to give you a quick fun story. So back when I was like 19, um, I sold a Christmas tree. My family's got a Christmas tree business. They sold a Christmas tree to this guy. Biggest tree ever, he asked me to put it up. The next day, somebody drops off a letter saying, I'm looking for Ryan Alexander. And I'm thinking, oh my God, this tree broke. It fell, it broke everything, all this stuff. Guy offers me a job, get into commercial real estate. 9-11 happens, everything I'm working on for almost two years completely shuts down. I'm like 60 days or less from payday. Everything shuts down, no commissions, racked up credit card debt. I get into the insurance world, pay off all my debt. I go to get a state farm agency, and they say, your sales are fantastic, but your credit sucks, so you don't qualify. I was like, credit sucks? What does that even mean? Fast forward 20 years, almost 25 years later, here I am traveling the country, traveling the world with my family, but traveling the country teaching people what the credit system is, how the credit system works, how to master it, how to manipulate it, and then how to maximize it so you can make life a lot more fun and affordable.

Yeah, that's a big part because, you know, as everything gets more expensive and people start to swipe plastic, we've all, I think, started to become a little more in tune with that three-digit number that we're all assigned, right?

Yeah, I mean, it's crazy, too, when you think about it. They hand these things out like lollipops to kids at colleges. They don't teach them the rules. They don't teach them the risks. They don't teach them the rewards. They don't teach them anything. But they hand them out, and these kids think that they're gift cards. And then five years later, they go to buy their first house or their first car or their first whatever, and they're like, yeah, sorry, bro, you don't qualify. And if you do qualify, you're buying a car at 27% interest or a credit card at 27% interest. It's crazy. I was even actually, last night I spoke at a, it was a business networking event in front of 33 business owners. And I said, quick show of hands, how many people understand the FICO's, or the FICO's, the factors of their FICO score? And like one or two people's hands went up. I was like, all right, how many guys understand fantasy football stats? And like 10 dudes hands went up. I'm like, this is what's wrong with America. Like our priorities are out of whack.

That's so funny. Yeah. Yeah. Fantasy football, we all know that, but yeah, when it comes to credit utilization, we might go, what's credit utilization, right?

Yeah, I love doing that, like in some of my videos, like, what's a FICO score? How do you find your reporting date? What's the greatest fantasy football player? People just, I'm like, oh my God, we are so screwed up in this country.

Yeah, you know their average points per game, right? But you don't know your credit score. I know that's a big thing when people come to me and they're like, okay, I need a lender. And I'm like, there's really only a couple of things that go into it. And it's your debt to income, clearly, your job and your credit score. There's not a whole lot that goes into it. And those things, those three things, the debt to income ratio, your job, how stable that is, and then your credit score are going to impact, like you say, what your final rate's going to be in terms of whether your car's at 27% or like mine right now, when money was cheap, I think my rate's at like 3% on my car.

It can go from 2.7% to 27% real quick if you don't know what the hell you're doing.

Yeah. And that's a scary, scary, uh, percentage when you get up into the twenties, because, um, even myself, I, I battled some of these high credit card rates and you're just trying to pay them down, trying to pay them down. And, and you want to hoard cash because, you know, you're uncertain about the what's to come and the election was approaching and glad that's over with. So we can all set.

Glad we can put that to rest, but, um, your positions, like at the end of the day, we're all Americans, right? Like we should just all get along and figure it out.

Gosh, that is exactly right. And help help each other because shoulder to shoulder is how we grow. Um, what's your mission and vision behind I teach credit.

So that's a great question. So at first, it was kind of like a game. You get your first credit card. And when I started this, I wasn't making a lot of money. I started to do better with credit. Coincidentally, I started to do better in business. But my initial thought was just like, hey, I'm just going to teach people how to have a little fun, maybe earn a free trip. So you have a new credit card. It's got a sign-up bonus. Take that money you're going to spend. You get a free trip out of it. Great. I mean, you're helping people like me who couldn't afford to take a trip. Now, I have free airfare, makes the trip a lot more affordable. Then as I started to help, a buddy of mine said, you're so good at this, why don't you start teaching it? Then when I thought about it, I'm like, man, coming from a kid who almost failed out of high school, quit college after one year, I'm going to now teach financial literacy to the country. I was like, if I can bridge the gap, of lifestyle inequality from the rich and educated to the not so rich and not so educated, if I can bridge that gap on a fifth grade reading level, how many lives could I change? What's the ripple effect of being able to just give that simple little education that is a part of everyday life and is never spoken about? That's my mission, to bridge that gap between a lifestyle inequality Because at the end of the day, credit score doesn't care about what your past was. They don't care about your race, your age, your color. They care about, do you pay your bills on time? Do you manage the account that you have right now responsibly? Are you maintaining it over the course of time? Because the new algorithm, Vantage Score 4.0, which I just found out two days ago, has been in use for a year. And the FICO 10T algorithm, which is rolling out now in certain states for certain categories, it's already in play. And it's about trending data. And that's going to throw a lot of people a wrench into their program or their profiles, because they're carrying credit card debt. They're carrying credit card balances. And it's OK from December to January. It's about bringing the education, and that's really the mission behind it. It's just to bridge that gap of lifestyle inequality. Because if you don't do the work, credit system's going to show it. And you don't have to make a lot of money to have a great credit score. But by having a great credit score, you get that little taste of the rich life, and it's a lot of fun.

It's funny that you say the, because I joke like the more money I've made, my credit score has gone down, right? You know, the less money I was making in the beginning, because I was brought up with my dad, he hated credit cards, hated credit cards. He's like, no credit card debit, debit, debit, debit. So he always preached that until all this, these incentives started coming up. And then he's like, well, shit, I might as well get something for, for my debit card, I might as well get some points or, or whatnot. And all these incentives started coming up like the Southwest card. And ever since then, it's like, he's almost. almost regrets it, you know, like he wishes it wasn't there, but it's, it helps, you know, in terms of, you know, gaining points and helping your score. But I think like you say, in college, we're, it is like a gift card. Like I, you know, I never realized, but it also money was a lot cheaper. Things were a lot cheaper. Um, and now that we're kind of maintaining that same lifestyle, do you think that's, what's kind of caught up to the, with this credit card debt?

You mean for the entire country?

Yeah.

Just how it's two sided. Right. And it's a double negative. Unfortunately, the first thing is the cost of goods is definitely more and the unfortunate position of the economy. I mean, look at our government. Like our government technically was filing bankruptcy in 2020. And I didn't know that until just recently, somebody showed me the documents and I'm like, what do you mean the cover? But when you realize they've been trying to raise the debt ceiling, how many times over the last, how many years, The country and the economy is doing it. Each individual household is definitely doing it because the cost of goods are going up. Inflation has been through the roof. And then when you add higher interest rates to that, now the already expensive things that you're now financing over six to 12 months are even more expensive. And that's why credit card debt right now is going through the roof. People have lost jobs since COVID, unfortunately. And a lot of companies in situations haven't recovered. And the ones that are, they're now still paying for the debt from four years ago. It's a snowball effect and it's a compounding effect that's not going in the right direction. I'm also going to say people buying $50 Stanley mugs and having to have their $7 friggin Starbucks every day and your kids have to DoorDash a $7 Chick-fil-A meal that costs you $17 by the time DoorDash is done. It's also, we have allowed our kids in society and parents, including, we are making really stupid decisions and we shun the people that try to hold us accountable to make better decisions. People don't want to be told what to do. And it's like, okay, well then I'm not helping anymore.

Yeah, hopefully my wife will be listening to this one. That's Starbucks. Starbucks and DoorDash.

Oh man, look at the time. I got to go. Sorry.

I'm telling you with that Starbucks and that DoorDash, it's almost, it's interesting how, you know, everything they can get away with, like inflating prices on those, on those apps and like food prices and, and then people will still pay it. Cause it's like, In a way, I guess it buys back your time, but you're losing money because there's better ways to do it, right?

Listen, you want to doordash once a month, I'm all for it. You doordash every single week, especially when you know you're not in the financial situation that you should be doing that. I don't feel bad for people. Yeah, see, I need to work on that. Listen, I was dead broke, so you gotta remember. And a funny story, 11 years ago, I was sleeping at the office that I worked at. I lived there. I slept in the office. I would get showered, change, and everything before anybody came in. Afterwards, I stayed in the office. That's where my life was 11 years ago. I worked seven days a week. Nobody cared. Nobody helped me out. You gotta figure it out. And that's where I'm like, In society three hundred four hundred years ago nobody cared if you didn't feel well or if you needed an emotional support dog care like you're the first person to go. And in society today we enable too many people like it's okay it's okay no it's not sometimes you just gotta roll up your sleeves you gotta go to work you gotta do what you gotta do and if you do that. Like, that's why I take cold showers. My wife calls me a sociopath. She's like, you're crazy. And it's like, if I can learn, and I'm not a huge Andrew Tate fan, but I love a lot of things that he teaches. If you can learn to be uncomfortable, you can learn to deal with a lot more stresses in society. Try it. Be hungry for a couple hours. Do 24 hour fast. Like, purposely be hungry. Purposely be cold. Purposely be tired and not want to work out. Go do that stuff. And I promise you, your world will change dramatically.

That is true. I say that to myself sometimes. I'm like, man, I wish you could just experience what it's like to just have nothing for a second or for a day just to appreciate. And every day I go to bed, I'm like, man, the water turns on. All these certain things that we take for granted, it's hard to really appreciate it, but every day you work on it, it's like you do, the gratitude for things becomes definitely greater.

Absolutely. I mean, not gonna lie, this morning, man, it was nine degrees when I woke up. I got in the shower, my wife's getting ready, I got in the shower and just got in and turned on the cold water. And my wife is like, you're out of your mind. And I just got no warming up, right? Like how many people let their shower warm up for five minutes before they get in it? No, I got in the shower, boom, turned it on, started brushing my teeth. It's a two minute timer on my toothbrush. When the two minutes is off, the hot water goes on. That is why I believe I'm able to deal with crazy stresses in life that the average person can't handle that.

That's in, you know, being in the credit world, that is one of the most uncomfortable conversations because yeah, it's, you're talking about debt, right? Nobody's, nobody's, you know, plus on their credit card, right? You know, you're all, it's rare.

And it's not even just because there's a lot of people that aren't in debt, but they just don't understand. And people are so afraid to look stupid in today's world that they'd rather just say nothing. Like last night at the business meeting, if you realized how many people sat and just looked at me with these blank stares, because I know they had no idea what I was talking about. And I was teaching them on a fifth grade level. But there were people asking me higher educated questions. And you could see the looks on these people like, Man, I'm the idiot with the fantasy football score and no FICO score like you could just see the looks on their faces and people are afraid. And so I tried. That's part of what I try to do is by creating a community which is really cool and you're aware with school aware of school. I built a community where people can be comfortable asking questions. Nobody gets to feel stupid. Because if you feel stupid, you're out. You're gone. I have zero tolerance for that stuff. There's no bullying. You're never going to make somebody feel stupid or small. We just need to do a better job of having conversations and saying, if you have questions, ask.

Yeah, that's a good, you know, it's kind of like on the, you know, the mental health side of things. It's the same thing. Like, there's no stupid question. Like, and especially in the credit world, I say the same thing. Like I tell people, like my credit's gone, fluctuated a hundred points. Like I'm, I'm going to be authentic. I'm going to tell you, yeah, sometimes it's hard. Sometimes we carry balances. Um, but yeah, you got to figure it out. No one's going to be there to save you. No one's going to be there to pay off your balances. So you do have to have a plan in place. Right. Yep.

And even if you don't, then go ask somebody for help. Because the biggest thing what people do now, and I just had a friend of mine yesterday, she went like this. She's gone like this for two years. By the time she looks again, it's that bad of a situation. There's not much I can do to help you now. I can still help you. And to be very clear here, my program is not more about credit repair. Mine is about organic building, structuring, and managing. That's my biggest focus. Can I help anybody repair their credit? Sure. What's my focus? Give me an 18-year-old kid within 30 days of turning 18. I'll set them up with a 700 credit score. Or give me a business owner, because I have 18-year-olds that have no credit. I had a business owner sold his company for $220 million. Couldn't get approved for a credit card, couldn't get approved for a car, couldn't get approved for a mortgage. That's bad. And he gave me six months, and six months, boom. Got him three new credit cards, and he was approved for his mortgage. $8 million mortgage, he was buying two $8 million condos. But that's more building and structuring, right? Like if you have a bunch of missed payments, a bunch of collections, I do not have the magic eraser, I don't wanna, I wanna help you, but if you want that, I'm not here to help you, because you're not gonna do that again.

I feel like you're then you're pushing, you might as well talk to a bankruptcy lawyer at that point, because sometimes I've seen people, they do that and it's actually, you know, as bad as it sounds, it benefits them, but we won't go down that route. So, um, but yeah, obviously the organic part of, of restructuring your score. So like, I was just talking with you before this, um, about how I paid off a giant chunk of credit utilization and I joked, my credit went up like 30 points and prior years or prior even months, um, maybe even before how you know, they do these new FICO scores. You know, it's definitely looked at my trend because prior it would have gone up probably about 60 points, I would say, with the amount I paid off. But I feel like with how long I carried that, I think that might've had some weight in there.

So let's just dive into that real quickly if we can. So when you're talking about the credit scoring system, it really only comes down to five factors. Now those five factors can be a little bit granular, but it comes down to this. Number one, payment history. Do you pay your bills on time? And what bills are we talking about? We're talking about auto loans, personal loans, student loans, mortgage loans, and credit cards. They're the only things that report. So your utility bills don't report. Your Netflix bill doesn't report. Anything where you're financing anything that's not a major loan or credit card, it's not going to report. It's important. Now, your rent doesn't report, but it can. If you need help building credit, you can report your rent. But payment history is 35% of your score. Well, people don't realize. I've had people miss a $5 credit card payment, and their score drops 50 points. So people need to know that that's really that important. Talking about credit card utilization, now, many people don't know the difference between credit cards or charge cards. These are charge cards. Charge cards don't have credit limits. These are credit cards. Credit cards have a credit limit. And a credit limit, or the credit limits on your credit cards, they influence 30% of your credit score. Now, let me ask you a fun question, just because I like to take a poll to see what people know or have been taught in society. What percentage credit card utilization should you report? What have you heard or what have people said you were taught you? I think it's under 10%. OK. So you're in the upper 10% of people who actually have knowledge on credit. Less than 10% is the actual number. For context, I wanted to show you something real fast here, just because I always like to give a little proof in the pudding that I actually am a person of knowledge and that I should speak some person of authority. So these are my scores. You can see 810 and 817. When you come into credit card, now this is Credit Karma. Everybody should have credit karma. I don't care what you think. I don't care what your Mortgage person tells you it is the best tool for you to use Okay, when you look at credit card usage now as you can see here my total available credit two hundred and thirty six thousand dollars That's personal available credit limits You see my utilization? The utilization grid says 0% to 9%, 10% to 29%. So it's 0% to 9%, you actually get points on your credit score. From 10% to 29%, it's like neutral territory. It doesn't help your score, but it's not hurting your score. The second you report 30% utilization, you start popping up on radars as a risky borrower. People don't know that. And I hear people say, oh, I should carry a 30% balance. And I'm like, No, because not only are you now a risky borrower, you're paying credit card interest, again, at 27%. So it's really, really important for people to realize credit card utilization is that important, which is why I'm going to give you my number one credit tip right now. to zero weekly. Every single day I go live and I teach anywhere from like 3,000 to 8,000 people on social media every morning. The number one credit tip is pay your credit cards to zero every single week. Treat it like cash or treat it like a debit card. If you do that, what happens is you've lowered your risk factor. The banks feel that much more comfortable with you. You have a better grip and a handle on your finances. Do you know why college kids get into so much trouble with these? I'm going to tell you, you're going to be like, man, that makes all the logical sense in the world. You ready? If I get a credit card January 1st, brand new credit card, when's my first bill due? Roughly.

February.

Seven weeks later. Seven weeks. Watch. I get a brand new credit card January 1st. I spend to the 30th. What happens? February 1st, they say, hey, congratulations, Blake, you spent $1,000 in the month of January. February 23rd, we want you to make a minimum monthly payment of $35. What do you do? You're like, these things are the best thing in the world. I spent $1,000. I only got to pay $35. Let's go. So what happens? They pay $35. Let's even say they're aggressive and they're like, I'm going to pay $500. I'm going to pay half of it off. Cool. If your bill is $1,000 and I pay $950, there's a $50 balance left over. Do I pay interest on the $50 or do I pay interest on the $1,000? It's on the 1,000. It's on the 1,000. Most people don't know that. See, you're way more educated than you even know. This is awesome. This makes me excited that you actually know and understand because when I tell people, no, you pay $900 or $1,000, you pay 950 bucks. No, you still pay interest on the full 1,000. They're like, but I paid 950 back. That's not how the game works. And that's what's crazy. People don't know this stuff. And they're too embarrassed to ask about it.

I just paid that 35,000. I go, what the, I go, I got charged interest still. I go, son of a, I go, no, it makes sense because I was, I was still late. It was tracking, it was behind, you know, those days that prorated, prorated interest. Yup.

And that's why I say, when you use cash, how fast does it come out of your pocket? When you use a debit card, how fast does it come out of your bank account? When you use credit cards, the difference is if you pay them on time, you get a reward back. And that's where I always say, if you pay two zero weekly, you will PTZW, you will MCYB, you will make credit your.

You can say that on this, on this show. Yeah. Right. No, that's, that's true.

I want to make credit your bitch, pay your credit cards to zero every single week. So all the Dave Ramsey fans who call us American distress, you can kick rocks because if you get into the habit of being disciplined, are guns dangerous? Yes. But if used wisely, responsibly, they can create food. They can do a lot of things. Are cars dangerous? Yes. Do you see us telling people stop driving? Cause they're bad. No, it's called grow up and be disciplined. Credit cards, you can make them your bitch by using them wisely and responsibly, and that's how you can go and travel the world. Instead of thumbing through your friends' TikTok and Instagram channels, go use credit cards wisely and let's have some fun together.

I like that. And so the difference you're saying on those charge cards and a credit card, how do you get a charge card over a credit card?

So charge cards, American Express, many people, they don't like charge cards. because they have high annual fees. Then I asked this question, how many people are afraid of high annual fee credit cards, but pay 27% interest and carry a balance every month? You laugh, you laugh, because it's funny. It's like the same person who's like, I'm not paying no high annual fees, you're paying 27% interest, knucklehead. Stop, just stop.

It's just spread out over a couple, 12 months. You don't realize that you want me to spread out your charge fee over 12 months.

Yeah. So the card cards are designed to be paid in full every single month, which is why you see, you know, typically business owners, banking executives, whatever, they carry these cards. Now, people are getting smart. The world of the internet has created education so people can get intelligent and say, wait, no, having that card? Like, sure, this card's got a $695 annual fee. But I get a $200 airline credit, $200 fine hotels and resorts credit, another $100 credit there. I get priority pass, which is like $400, global entry, which is $100 and a quarter. And I get lounge access every time I fly. Let's go.

Yeah. I mean, and in terms of when you say like your credit limit, is there, would you say there's a certain credit limit to have or just obviously it's all just about the utilization?

So the higher, the better, right? So I'm going to share with you, um, I'm going to share with you. This is funny, but I like to play around with, if you have the Amex Platinum and Charge card or any of the Charge cards, they have what's called spending power. Now, I showed you my 236,000 of available credit, and I can show that on here actually. The higher the credit limits, the better. If you just look at this, you can see 9,500, 24,000, 10,000, 20,000. These are all credit limits. These are all my personal cards. And I show this to people every single day to build trust and rapport. My business gold card, this is a stupid number, but Amex has the spending power tool. This is my business gold card spending power. Good news. I like that. It won't go over that number. In fact, I got, I called MX because they shut it down on me. They're like, you got to stop playing with that. That's not good. I was like, okay. But, but it was, it was fun because every single week when I go live, people were like, try two 50, try 300, try 500. And then it was like, people were like clapping and like cheering. And of course it's on a zoo or on tech talks. Like I can't hear them, but like people's comments are going through the roof. And then people were signing up. They're like, can you get me a $900,000 credit card? I'm like, Maybe, but it took me six years to get here. So let's just be real people.

Yeah. I was going to say you're, you're about as, uh, you know, low of a risk is anybody in the world here. So that, yeah.

And that's what I want to teach people. I want to teach people. There's freedom and discipline. Okay. Discipline does equal freedom. Okay. But. It's strategic freedom. And going back to the factors of the credit, payment history, utilization, and there's age of credit history. People don't realize that. That is why every 18-year-old kid, the week they turn 18, they should get their first credit card. And they should be taught how it works. They should be taught how to use it. They should be taught when to pay it. And if we do that, they'll live better. That's interesting.

Yeah. Sorry. It's interesting. You say that about the, um, to build credit. Can't you build credit like from the time they're born? Cause I have a credit from bonds that were open to my name. Is that, is that a thing?

I've never heard of bonds cause bonds don't report on credit profiles. You can do it with helping kids, um, by adding them as an authorized user. So what you want to do, another great point to discuss the difference between credit cards and charge cards. When your kids turn 18 years of age, you should add them to at least one or two cards. These cards should be cards that, A, have at least a year of history, B, never have missed payments at all on them, and C, they should be cards with low to zero utilization on them. OK? And they should be credit cards, not charge cards. These are actually my business charge cards. But they should be credit cards, because if there's no utilization, that's 30% of your score. You're leaving that out. That's going to negatively, it's going to not necessarily help or impact your score. Business cards, I've had people add their kids to business cards, because they're like, oh, I spend a million dollars a year. Business cards don't even report. So you did it for nothing, because it doesn't even show up. But that's where you want to add kids when they turn 17. Have them set up on one of your Chase, Amex, Capital One, Discover, maybe a Barclays, like a big bank credit card. Make sure there's minimal usage. And then the day they turn 18, they should already have either a license or like a state ID. They should get Credit Karma account. And then they should go to Capital One pre-approval, Discover pre-approval, or Chase pre-approval. You can search all three pre-approval tools. and let them see what they qualify for. Because many people will just go and have their kid get a secure credit card. I'm not against that idea, because it teaches kids about prepaying and then paying back. I'm OK with that idea. But if your kids are smart enough and they know about credit from 15, 16 on, my kids now, they know about it. They understand it. because we travel enough. Funny story, my wife's turning 40 and my daughter's turning 16, my stepdaughter's turning 16. I gave her a choice. I said, you want a sweet 16 party or you want a trip? She goes, I want a trip. How cool is that? She could have a party with all of her friends. She's like, no. And I said, pick a place in the world. And they know when they graduated school two years ago, I said, pick any place in the United States. Let's go. They chose Nashville of all places, which I loved. It was fantastic. But my daughter, my wife chose Costa Rica. So we're leaving for Costa Rica. It's pretty awesome.

Oh, see, that's smart. I would be the same way. That's, you know, I'd be wanting to travel to. Well, what's interesting to look at when I pull up my credit, the age of my oldest account, it says 25 years and nine months. So apparently I get.

It'll, it'll tell you, is it a credit card? Is it a lot? Like it has to be a capital one.

Yeah. So I guess, so my father must've added me cause I'm 32. So I must've been eight when he added me on there. Is that possible?

I guess it's possible, but it doesn't, it doesn't matter because yes, he could have added you on, but he could have added you on at 15. He could have added you on two years ago or last year. The age of that account, this is why I said it's not the size of the credit limit that matters, it's the age on the account. Everybody's like, I'm going to add you to a $30,000 credit card. Don't care. I want a card that's got 25 years of history. That's what's more important.

Oh, wow. Okay. That's really interesting right there. That makes sense.

You add your 18-year-old child with a card that's got 10 years age of history, now they have 10 years of history when they go and they get their first credit card.

There we go. Solve that one for me. I always wondered. I don't even think my dad knew. I'm like, you know, that's perfect education because I feel like on certain credit reports, I'm like, wait, it doesn't say that.

And it might not because it might not report on all bureaus. Like I had my dad added me to a card when I went to college just so that when I was up there, God forbid, if I needed it for emergency. and up until just this past year, it was a Barclays card and it reported. It closed in 2009, but it was still reporting for some reason on my credit report, and it was giving me like 28 years of credit history, but my oldest card was only like nine or 10 years old.

That's yeah, that's exact. That's interesting right there. So, and one couple more things before I let you go here, obviously these chase, these Wells Fargo, they carry a lot of weight, right? Yep. As you would say the, the, I wouldn't say the bullies, but you know, they're the ones that the big boys, yeah, the big boys. Right. So pay those ones down before you, you know, the store ones, I guess. Right.

All right, so I'm going to give you and your audience, I'm going to give you guys a nugget that I don't usually give, but I only give it to my private community. Just so people know, my private community is cheap. If you guys are interested, you can reach out to me, but it's cheap. Here's the best nugget that you can learn. When you're paying off credit card debt, this is the order. Now, you'll hear a couple of things. You'll hear highest interest rate. You'll hear snowball effect, smallest card. This is how you pay credit cards off. The best way to boost your score, to pay the least amount of interest, and to possibly restructure the debt in the best way to help you overall. The first thing you do is you look at all your credit cards by list of highest percentage utilization. Why? Utilization is what influences your credit score. For example, if you have two credit cards, one credit card has a $5,000 limit and a $2,000 balance. That's reporting 40% usage. You have another credit card that's got a $2,000 balance and a $2,000 limit. That's reporting 100% utilization. It's the same $2,000. If you pay the 100% utilization, your score will skyrocket. If you pay the 40% utilization, your score will go up, but not by as much, because the usage is higher. That's how the algorithm works. Now, there's a third component that most people don't know about. Or, for example, let's say you have three credit cards with a balance that's less than $2,000. You could pay all three credit cards to zero. Now you've got three credit cards reporting zero. That'll also boost your score, but it also depends on the percentage utilization. The third component you want to look at is this. For example, let's say you have a card that's going to report in nine days, and you have a card that just reported three days ago. You pay the card that's going to report in nine days because you need three days before the reporting date. Do you understand what a reporting date is?

Explain to the audience.

Yeah. All right. So reporting date is this. You have a 30 day statement cycle. This is the starting date. This is the ending date. Okay. So this could be January 1st. This could be January 30th. This could also be January 17th. This could be February 16th. The first day of the month is the starting date of the cycle. The last day of the statement cycle, is your actual reporting date. It's a 30-day window. The snapshot that reflects on your credit report. I don't care if your credit card is maxed out for 27 days of the month. As long as on that reporting date, three days before the reporting date, you pay that card down and it reports no more than 3%, that's how you boost your score. So if you see a reporting date that's coming up in the next 10, 15 days versus one that's 27 days away, pay that one card off first. because then your score will update very quickly. Three to five days, sometimes seven days, depending on the bank, your score will reflect and update. Then you can take your credit card debt, like let's say you have $5,000 of credit card debt, and let's say your score is sitting at 650, you get a loan and you move the $5,000 of credit card debt to a loan, watch what happens to your credit score. It's the same debt, but because your usage just went. And now you have the loan, your score will skyrocket. And you're adding additional payment history because you have an additional account that's now reporting on your profile.

And I'm sure that interest rate is a lot lower than that credit card interest rate on a loan, right?

I take people from 27% down to 15% or 12% all the time.

Yeah. And, you know, there's good things out there. SoFi has some really good personal loans to consolidate your credit cards. And, you know, I'm sure you've heard of stuff like that. And I know, you know, stuff like that and get people out of debt because, yeah, that that interest on those credit cards will just destroy you. So you had one last one last tip. Obviously, you've you've given the golden nugget. So you've, you've dug, you know, deep down into your, uh, bag of tricks. If there's one, I guess, let's say one card that you would open right now as somebody that's just got a seven 50 credit score, doesn't have a lot of debt, but it's carrying some utilization might want to balance transfer. What are you, what are you telling people right now that do have some credit card debt, but they're all right, but they should try to get rid of some of that.

So if you have credit card debt, here's the problem. If you go to a 0% balance transfer card, you're going to not pay interest, but you can max out that card, and that could hurt your score depending on your situation. Because right now, what's happening in the economy, I'm seeing people, their credit limits, people that are maxed out, Other credit limits on other credit cards are getting reduced. And as you're paying down the credit card debt on that credit card, they're paying or they're reducing your credit limit to almost just above what you're paying the balance down to. That's happening to a lot of people. And it's weird, wild, and scary. So in that situation, it's case specific. I would try to see if you qualify for a loan. Pay your credit card down as low as you can. and then try to move it to a loan so that you can diversify the debt and spread the risk out across a couple different avenues. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it's like taking, you know, I did it myself at one point where I had like 18,000 of debt and I moved it. Instead of having to keep up with a credit card, I was able to, hey, move that to the side, pay 350 a month and then eventually pay it off, stuff like that. So it does make a difference.

One warning right now, please, share this even after the fact, do not go to any kind of debt relief or debt consolidation companies. If any company tells you, you do not have to pay or to stop paying your bills, please run. They are wrecking credit profiles. You have no idea. tyrant or a raid the other night, because it's happening more and more and more that these companies are saying, we're going to renegotiate your debts. You just stop paying on it. And for three months, we'll negotiate it. You'll have one clean, small payment. It'll be like 40% cheaper than what you're paying right now. And everything's going to be great. Here's what happens. They tell all these other companies, my client's not paying you. We're going to restructure the debt. We're going to come up with a payment that works for my client. They come up with a new payment. Let's just say you're paying $1,500 across all your credit cards. Now you pay $1,000. They take 30% to 40% for themselves. And they shut down all your accounts. But here's what happens. A lot of those companies, because you went through that group, that debt relief, the National Debt Relief Group, every single month, you're reporting missed payments. If you call the lender yourself, call up Capital One and say, hey, I'm in a bad spot. Can we please cancel the account? And can I work out a payment plan with you? I don't want to have missed payments. I don't want to have, you know, I don't want to file bankruptcy. I don't want to go, I want to work out something, but can you please just stop the missed payments and stop pounding on the interest? Like, okay, you've already added, you know, a hundred percent interest on my card balance. Please do that. I'm telling you right now, Blake, that's happening so much right now. It has me infuriated. It's terrible.

So, but people are able to, like you said, that's take a step and call a credit card company. Don't be shy about just telling them the truth.

They're going to negotiate the same thing with you that they're going to negotiate with the other people. The only difference is you're giving them a hundred percent of the payment where the other group's taking 40% of the payment.

And just, and giving you a 300 credit score back, right?

Oh, it's, I had one woman, she had seven cards, 13 months of missed payments. Cause they told her stuff. She's been paying for 12 months. She's been paying for 12 months and has 13 missed payments because they told her just stop paying, we'll take care of it. She's got a 400 credit score, nobody's going to give her money.

Christ Almighty, that type of stuff's unfortunate. So yeah, you don't, God forbid, don't stay away from those. That's gonna be our sign off. Stay away from those and reach out to you. Like you said, you're not one to push people. You're gonna let people, as they say, the whole thing, love, let others voluntarily evolve. And if they wanna evolve over to you and have some credit advice, you're definitely the guy to go to for sure.

Yeah, and I will live I'm going to part with this if there's one card, one card people should focus on getting. It's the easiest card to use. It's got a fantastic signup bonus. And it's one of those cards that it's just a great long term keeper card, you can power it with a good power duo or pair it with a good power duo. It's the Capital One Venture Card. I do have links. I have affiliate links for all these cards, like this card you can actually pay your mortgage with if you've never seen that. You can pay rent or your mortgage. They give you a routing and an account number. You can pay your mortgage. You get one point per dollar. I put 230,000 points into World of Hyatt bucket. That's like 20 hotel stays, like easily. because I was paying my mortgage. But this card right here, the 75,000 point signup bonus, that's worth at least $750. If you transfer the points, it could be worth up to 2,300 bucks. It's one simple credit card, 2X back on any purchase, whether it's your gas, your groceries, your utilities, Friday night flowers and fast food with your wife, like whatever the case may be. This is right now currently the easiest card, not the best, there's obviously some better cards, the easiest card that all people should have.

Wow. That's all. That's great info. And I'll go ahead and, and we'll have those links in, uh, on the, on the show notes. So if anybody wants to obviously go for those credit cards, those links will be there. So, um, big, thank you, man. I appreciate you coming on here and sharing all this wisdom with us today.

This was awesome, man. I greatly appreciate you having me on here, Blake. And again, it's about the ripple effect, right? Like I can bridge this gap for a lot more people with shows and opportunities like this. So I tremendously appreciate, I mean, I hope you learn something. I mean, if you learn one thing that you implement for the next 40 years of your life, that's a win for me. And then you pass that on to your kids, you know, the ripple effect just continues on.

Yeah. And even if you know everything, it's great to just be reminded, you know, it's continuing education. So, you know, you can never, never learn too much. That's for sure. Because things are always changing.

Especially like now with the new FICO algorithms, the banks are getting smaller or smarter. Technology is getting better. The leash is getting shorter. You used to be able to pull out that magic eraser. Guess what? The third party data providers now, data and technology, they're like, ah, no, you really missed 17 payments last year. You're not getting that removed.

That is true. And it is interesting because I am hearing people going, you know, I'm having a hard time getting a loan now or getting approved for a credit card. And he's like, they're like, you know, I make $600,000 a year. And I'm like, well, it doesn't really matter. The 600,000, you got to dive into that a little farther. And that's, you know, what you say, because it doesn't matter how much you make.

$220 million in the bank. They wouldn't give him a loan.

That's scary. That is scary. We're going to leave it at that one. So, uh, if anybody wants any more information, all of his links are going to be in the show notes. And obviously you can go to iteachcredit.com for more resources and tools to elevate your financial game. So thanks a lot, Alex. I appreciate it.

You got it, brother. Have yourself a great day, Blake. Take care, man.

Thanks. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode. We sure do appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you consume podcasts. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. And if you feel so inclined, please leave us a review and tell your friends about the show. Until next time.