[Music] everywhere you watch on television build your fico score the great fico fico fico fico fico this is a myth that has got to end you can inherit 10 million dollars today your fico score won't change one point you could your boss could walk in today and give you a raise to a million dollar a year income this morning and your fico score won't change one point unless you go into debt having used that money isn't that interesting it is not a sign of winning don't worship at the altar of the great fico [Music] i don't have a fico score because i want to avoid debt completely because i've never been in debt i have no fico score and i get around just fine i don't have a fico score and i want to keep it that way because debt has never made sense to me i've never had a credit card because i've you know just seen through so many people the pain they've gone through i want to have the freedom to actually be able to go on vacation and enjoy myself while i'm there to be able to start a family someday and be able to give our kids the opportunities that they want because we're not burdened by debt not having debt or not having a fico score really hasn't been difficult for me i've been able to rent a house get a cell phone get utilities cable rent hotels rental cars travel europe never had one i mean people say well you need it you need a credit card so you can rent a car or book a hotel room no actually i don't um i just use my debit card i'll be honest with you it's not always easy your very first time when you're first running an apartment or getting a cell phone a lot of times you will have to pay extra money but once you've had that first opportunity to prove yourself you do well you pay your bills early you pay your rent always early you're going to have that for future reference and not have to always put down the extra money as you do the very first time when i went to get electricity in my first apartment i had to put down 250 as a deposit but i got it back after several months of paying on time anytime i've ever run into that i've been able to say well hey if your purpose is to find out if i'm a good renter and if i pay my bills on time if i pay my rent on time i can give you my landlord's name that i'm currently renting from i can give you you know personal references and i can give you the different bills that i've paid that aren't debt related i have a folder where i keep anything i need to pull up for records so i can show someone hey look i'm perfectly capable of taking care of this i don't have a fico score and i never want one i've never had a fico score and i don't need one i don't have a fico score and i never will i don't have a fico score and i'll never need one i don't have a fico score and i will never get one i don't have a fico score and i'm happy i love it it's it's great and i'm not worried about it [Music] [Applause] your credit report lists not only who you are your name address social security number birth date those kinds of things but it also lists every time you've borrowed money and or paid it off every one of the accounts that has activity on it the last seven years and so if you've got seven credit cards there'll be seven credit cards listed down through there and how you've paid on every one of those your interaction with debt including those listings on your credit report goes into an algorithm a mathematical process that then creates your credit score your credit score is supposedly a one number representation of all of your interaction with debt i question that but that's that's their goal at fico [Music] you need to pull a copy of your credit report at least once a year these days because of the potential of identity theft now if you've frozen it you might want to pull your bureau only every two years but good financial planning these days entails checking your credit report even if you don't have credit i check mine and i don't borrow money but it is mainly to make sure that some goofball hadn't put something on there that had nothing to do with me or that some goofball hadn't stolen my identity [Applause] [Music] now what do you do if you've got identity theft and identity theft is rampant million people this year have had their identity stolen their social security number their driver's license number their credit card number or numbers it is the fastest growing white collar crime in north america today so what to do what to do what to do when we get to the insurance lesson i'm going to talk about identity theft protection which i now believe in if you get the right kind and i'll show you what to do with that but if you don't have that and if you have your identity stolen here are the steps and here's what you do because it takes the average consumer about 600 hours to clean up a mess once their identity is stolen it's a big deal and it's a problem the first thing you do is you place a fraud victim alert on your credit bureau report a fraud victim alert on your credit bureau report and you can do that for free you can simply go online and just report that the fraud victim situation danger danger don't anybody else pick up an account off of this name now if you go ahead and do the next step which you should do is get a police report if you do that and you turn in the police report to the credit bureau they then will make that fraud victim alert permanent on your bureau if you do not it will only stay on 90 days they'll leave it on there for 90 days and they'll drop it off if you don't get a police report showing that your identity has actually been stolen so go get a police report if you have suspicion or proof that it's been stolen sadly it's usually fairly easy to have proof because about 80 percent of the identities are stolen by people you know called scum when you steal someone's name when you sign someone's name it's not your name you are by definition a criminal this is you are a bank robber this is a crime it's criminal fraud go to jail time stuff okay so this is not a it's not something you want to fool with so when you do the police report you got to tell the truth it was it was my mother it was my brother it was my old roommate was my ex-fiancee it was this guy down at work i mean if you know you got to say otherwise you're participating in the fraud then okay so you have to be completely clean with this process the next thing is remember this is theft when someone steals your checkbook one time a guy threw a brick through my wife's window while she was at the gym grabbed her purse out and went and started writing checks on our account signing dave ramsey and sharon ramsey's name on the checkbook were we liable for those checks yes or no no when they got to the bank the bank accidentally paid one of them and the bank ate that one the rest of them the bank denied and the store didn't get to collect the money they called us want the money we swear aren't paying you the money we didn't sign the checks a thief did that you didn't check id you lost the money that's how that works if you'd looked at that lady's picture i don't think it would have looked like sharon it's just my thought i don't know and i think that's what you found so they lose their money so when there's a theft occurs you're not liable in this situation so you owe nothing and you need to pay remember that because the credit card companies and some of these other people will act like you're the criminal and you're supposed to pay and all these bad things are going to happen to your credit if you don't pay and that's wrong someone stole your identity open an account with doofus bank incorporated over here because doofus bank didn't check and make sure it wasn't toby cocker the cocker spaniel and then they went and ran up a bill well the bank is the one that got ripped off by the criminal not you you didn't lose any money nor do you owe any money under the law and don't let them bully you or push you into paying something that you don't owe that is a big deal the next thing you do is to contact the fraud victim division of the creditor and furnish them documentation now sometimes when you contact the fraud victim division again they're going to treat you like you did something wrong because they think you ran up the bill and just don't want to pay it and you're acting like it's fraud and that that i'm sure that happens sometimes but they treat everybody that way and it's a it's crazy customer service is two words that don't go together in the in in the credit card world okay so when you go to the fraud victim division be prepared if you're the victim to be treated like the criminal and don't be pushed into paying this stuff and here's what you've got to do you've just got to be persistent you now have a new hobby and you will fight this and you will provide documentation and you will fight it and you'll provide more documentation and then you're going to send out more letters and then you're going to do this and you're going to put these these freezes on your bureau and these different things and finally eventually it'll go away and i'll tell you what yeah if it's a relative of yours you need to take care of this just a thought now correcting a credit report inaccuracy like we were talking about a while ago federal fair credit reporting act requires the credit bureau to remove any and all accuracies within 30 days of notification so we notify them we notify them with a letter the sample letter is here in the lesson and it just says this item is inaccurate according to the federal fair credit reporting act you have 30 days to fix this item or remove it you do not have to identify what's wrong with it you just have to say this item's inaccurate then they go to visa they go to the bank they go to american express or whoever it is and american express doesn't answer they have to take the whole thing off now if the lender or the creditor answers and says oh yes it is accurate your beef is now not with the credit bureau your beef is with the person reporting to the credit bureau inaccurately and you got to go to them and dig this weed out by the root but you can get it taken off because about most of the time when you dispute an item that that lender will never get around to answering the dispute within 30 days and it'll be cleansed off it may pop back on there later when they download some databases again but at least you got it off for that period of time and if it keeps popping back on there then go to the source and dig it out that's how that that's how that's going to work all of these letters should be sent certified mail return receipt requested so you can prove that they got the letter you got the letter on a cert on june 6 so you have till july 6 you have 30 days after that i'm going to make you my new hobby i'm going to just beat on you until you take the entire item off i don't want to hear correspondences in the mail you have 30 days by federal law cleanse it that's it i'm not arguing with you about this and if you get on them like that they'll do it you have to be persistent if the item isn't corrected within 30 days you should request that they move that they remove the entire item from your file get it completely out of your life if you have complaints you lodge those on this subject with the federal trade commission [Music] you