There’s a credit crisis affecting most of the 20 million college students in America. And no, we’re not just talking about the large amount of student loan debt most of us are getting with a diploma.
An epidemic of low credit scores is threatening a college grad’s ability to get the apartment they want, buy a car at little or no interest, or even land the dream job.
Your credit score is a numerical analysis of how creditworthy you are based on your credit history (yes, you get graded in real life). The FICO credit score ranges from 300-850, with 300 being not so great and 850 being the absolute top.
A 2016 survey from credit-reporting firm Experian found that 50% of recent college students rated their opportunities to learn about credit and finance as poor or fair. Most of the students surveyed had never even seen their scores before. Without credit education, students are graduating in serious debt and with no credit history. That can lead to low or nonexistent credit scores. You need a good score to rent an apartment, land a great job, buy a car and so much more. Building up that score takes years and can be a huge financial set back for college graduates. College students don’t know that they needed to start building credit yesterday.
Why you shouldn’t wait to build a successful financial future
The first step is to find out what the hell your score is anyway. There are free tools like CreditKarma.com or Mint.com that let you check your credit for free and will only conduct a soft pull which will not impact your score in any way. A hard pull, usually used when you get a new credit card or take out a loan, can lower your score initially.
Knowing your score is only one piece. Knowing why that score matters is also critical.
• Your future employer can get a credit report before they send you the offer letter, just to make sure you aren’t in serious debt.
• Your future landlord will run your credit before you get the chance to sign a lease on your new apartment; nobody likes an unreliable lessee.
• Don’t even think about trying to buy a new car until that score is high enough for you to apply for a loan on it.
• Before you say “I Do,” you may want to ask your partner what their credit score is. “What’s mine is yours” applies to debt too.
• No seriously...a survey in US News reported 3 in 10 women and 2 in 10 men said they wouldn’t even consider marrying someone with a bad credit score.
Starting that process of building a successful financial future is easier than you think. There’s a few responsible borrowing practices that will also help you build your credit score before you graduate.
• Make sure you’re caught up on any payments you owe.
• Only open new accounts (credit cards, loans) as needed and on a slow basis.
• Keep your spending way under your credit limit.
• Check your report regularly to make sure there aren’t any errors.
• Borrow small amounts of money like borocash and pay back on time.
We want to help solve this crisis, and that’s why we created borocash.
Start small. Like borocash small. borocash is easy and fast financing for those expenses that sneak up on you. Get up to $2000 and pay us back in 12 months. borocash has:
• No credit history required
• No hard pull on your credit report (ever)
• Low, monthly interest payments
• Small and automatic monthly payments (that won’t change every month)
• A set amount of cash that will prevent overspending
• An optional recharge for your account (you aren’t locked in after paying off)
• An awesome app to track your payments and learn more about finances
Beat the crisis and set up your successful financial now with borocash.