How to Build or Improve Your Credit Score

Thank you for joining us for how to build or improve your credit score. Today's program is part of the monthly financial skills building series which is an ongoing collaboration between the library San Francisco uh economic justice center and the San Francisco LGBT center. My name is Jonathan and I'm the personal finance librarian at the public libraries business science and technology center. Uh while we give folks a few more minutes to join the webinar, I'll take the opportunity to share some library announcements and highlight some upcoming events. First, if you need closed captions during the presentation, click on the CC or show captions button in the Zoom menu. San Francisco Public Library acknowledges that we occupy the unseated ancestral homeland of the Ramos community, Aloney peoples, who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. We recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. As uninvited guests, we affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors, elders, and relatives of the Ramitish community. All right. You can visit us at the business science and technology center which is on the fourth floor of the main library. Email us at bisitecf.org or call us at 415-5574488. You can also contact us through our chat reference service which can be found on sfpl's homepage sfpl.org. Look for the chat with us button or scroll down to the contact us link. To find out uh more about all the business and finance resources that we offer, head to the libraries homepage. You can find us under the research and learn tab or go directly to our department's page at sfpl.org/bst. And if you're interested in recordings of our past programs, visit SFPL's YouTube channel. You can find our personal finance, small business, and jobs and careers recordings at on.sfpl.orgsuccess. Um, and this program is being recorded and a link to the recording will be shared in a follow-up email. All right, I am excited to announce our 2026 edition of Financial Planning Day on Saturday, October 24th. Join us for a full day of expert advice on managing your finances and planning for the future. You can get free objective, no strings attached, one-on-one counseling from certified financial planner professionals, and attend workshops throughout the day. Topics this year include investing, income tax updates, property tax, and intergenerational transfers, resources to strengthen your financial skills, and an empowering approach to budgeting. Visit sfpl.org/financial. rg/financial-planning for more information and to sign up for a one-on-one session. We have a bunch of other great programs coming up in September and October, and I'll just share links to those um in the chat in just a moment. But one other thing I wanted to point out, um the Low-Income Taxpayer Clinic will be returning to the main library uh Wednesday, August 26th to offer free 30inut legal consultations on tax issues. Uh these consultations are available on a first come first- serve basis. You can check in at the clinic's table in the atrium lobby at the main library to make a singing day appointment. And there are no income limits for these consultations. All right. Finally, you can stay updated about all of our services and upcoming programs via our events calendar or by subscribing to our once a month email newsletter. Scan the QR codes here or follow the links on this slide. And again, I'll post all these links uh in the chat window in just a moment. All right, that's it for me. I'm now gonna hand it over to Andrea Ye, who will provide more information about the Economic Justice Center and introduce today's presenters. Thanks, Andrea. >> Thanks so much, Jonathan, and a warm welcome to everyone joining us today. Um, I really appreciate you taking the time to be here for San Francisco Financial Counseling's webinar, How to Build and Improve Your Credit Score, which we're hosting in partnership with the San Francisco Public Library. Um, a little bit about us. San Francisco Financial Counseling is one of the flagship programs of the Economic Justice Center, which is part of the treasures office here in San Francisco. Um, the Economic Justice Center leverages the powers of the treasur's office into tools that help San Franciscans build savings, reduce debt, and keep more of what they earn, all while eliminating unjust fine and fees, protecting um and protecting people from predatory financial practices. We work across city departments to help design systems and policies that support financial stability instead of creating barriers to ensure that every resident has a fair shot at economic security and opportunity. Um again, my name is Andrea Ye and I lead our free financial counseling program which was formerly known as Smart Money Coaching. Um but we provide we still provide free one-on-one financial counseling to anyone who lives, works, or receives any type of service here in San Francisco. So that's regardless of um immigration status or income bracket because we want to make sure that our service um is open to as many people as possible. San Francisco financial counseling is funded by multiple city departments and the services are provided by different providers who have expertise um giving financial capability services to various communities in San Francisco. Um, the San Francisco LGBT Center is one of those wonderful service providers and our financial counselors joining us today are from the LGBT center. Um, I wanted to I think Jonathan already mentioned that this session is being recorded and we'll be sure to send out all the slides um and the recording to everyone who registered. Um, I just wanted to also note this is going to be an interactive presentation. So, feel free to chime in with your responses and questions in the chat and I think um, our counselors were will do their best to, you know, um, respond to your questions as they come in as well as make some time available at the end as well. Um, and with that, let me go ahead and introduce our counselors. Uh Tori was raised in the Midwest and brings a grounded client first approach shaped by years of housing policy work, political organizing and campaigns across the Bay Area. They hold a master's degree in urban and public affairs from the University of San Francisco with a focus on affordable housing policy. Um we also have Andrea who's born and raised in South America and earned her degree from Karacus, Venezuela. She has over 10 years of experience in business and corporate law as a legal assistant and legal business adviser. She's passionate about combining her interest, career, and her background as a native Spanish speaker to empower others in her community. Andrea Tori, why don't you take it away? Thanks, Andrea. Let me go ahead and share presentation here. Thank you all so much for joining today um for our presentation, how to build or improve your credit score. Um as Andrea said, my name is Tori and I'm a financial counselor with the LGBT center. So, just a few quick things before we get started. Um we would first like to ask if you would be willing to fill out our sign-in sheet. It's just a few quick questions about all of you. um so we can continue to offer these free uh workshops for all of you. Um Andrea's also going to drop the link in the chat, but you can also scan the QR code that you see here on the slide. Um we do ask if you can um save questions to the end or you can submit them by the Q&A feature. Um but we are generally going to save time for questions at the end. So there will be an opportunity to get those questions answered then. Um, and any questions that you have that are personal to your unique circumstances, those are best left for a financial counseling session, that just gives us the opportunity to gain the full context about your personal situation to give you the best well-rounded answer. Now, in this presentation, we are going to cover everything that you'll need to know about the basics of credit. We're going to discuss what credit is, scores and reports, why it matters, and how to find all the information about your credit. We're also going to talk about how to build and improve credit and how to manage debt and how to protect the credit that you've built and how to improve it. Now, starting off, what exactly is credit? So at its very base, it is the uh ability to borrow money so that you can get goods and services now with the understanding that you're going to pay it back later. Now, credit can sometimes have some negative associations in our culture and this is because some of the associations that people can have between credit and debt. But credit is not necessarily just a negative thing. It is a really important part of your financial power because there are going to be things that you need or want in your life that you can't necessarily pay for entirely right at that time. This can be things like getting an education at a 4-year college or a trade school or getting a car or getting a mortgage for a house. There's lots of things that you might need to access credit for. And keeping your credit strong or keeping a high credit score can allow you to qualify for those things, access those goods and services and also access them at a lower rate. We're going to unpack more of what that means in this presentation. But that essentially means that that credit will be cheaper as you pay it off over time. Now, what is your credit score? So, it's generally going to be a three-digit number that ranges from 300 to 850. And we're going to get into how that is determined as well. But overall, that number is used to determine creditworthiness, which at its core is whether you are going to pay back debt on time. And you will probably know if you've engaged with credit or once you start engaging with credit that you're going to have lots of different scores from lots of different companies. But the most well-known is going to be the FICO score. And this stands for the Fair Isaac Corporation. But there's lots of different types of scores. There's scores for auto loans. There's scores that they look at specifically for mortgages. Another type that you might see commonly is the Vantage score, but the most common that you're going to see are many different types of FICO scores. Now, why exactly do we care about credit? So, I alluded to this a little bit in the first slide, but credit scores can help you in a number of different ways. So, if you're looking to access in particular rental housing, landlords will generally pull your credit and to see look at your credit score when they're determining your application. It can also determine how much it costs for you to get access to services. Like if you're looking to get a new cell phone plan, new cable plan, a new internet plan, any of those that can determine how much it costs for you to get those services based on your credit score. It can also determine whether you can get a loan to start a business, buy a home, or a car. So, it can determine whether you can get those loans to achieve financial goals. you might have in those areas. And like I said, the higher the credit score, more likely you are to be able to get those things, to get approved, and you're going to have lower rates. So, it's going to be cheaper to pay that off over time. You'll have you will have less interest to pay. Now, the credit score is based on information in the credit report, and it's made up by the percentages that's in this wheel. We're going to break down exactly what each of these categories mean. So, the largest category that you will see here that makes up 35% of what contributes to your credit score is payment history. So, this is whether or not you have made payments on time. This is the number one thing that contributes to your credit score, the most important thing you can do to build or improve your credit. The next category, which makes up 30%, is how much you owe. This is also known sometimes as the credit utilization. So that's how much of your credit you're currently using at any given time is 30%. Then we go to the next category 15% which is length of credit history or how long you have been using credit. Generally you want to have credit for about 8 to 10 years before it starts to reflect positively on your score there. Then you have a credit mix 10%. So that's looking at the whether you have kind of a mix credit cards loans. Then there is new credit. And we're going to get into inquiries a little bit later on in this presentation, but there is an impact on your credit when you apply for and get new credit, but it is temporary. Now, all of this information is fed into big algorithm, which comes out with your credit score, that three-digit number, which all determines how likely you are to pay back that debt. and whether or not you're going to do it on time. And this can vary, like I said, based on the scoring model. You can have lots of different scores. For example, would be different in the FICO versus the Vantage. Now, we'll get a little bit into what impacts your credit score. So, some things that can make your credit score go up. Like I said, that largest category, that 35% of your credit score is going to be if you're paying uh paying those bills on time, borrowing that money, paying it back on time. Also, that credit utilization. Generally, you don't want to use more than 30% of your credit limit at any given time. Keeping it below that will have a positive impact on your score. Then when it comes to credit mix, uh you want to generally look at having three to four accounts and a mix of credit cards and loans. This is because they want to not only see that you're able to use credit, but that you're able to uh handle a couple of different kinds of a couple of different accounts and different kinds of credit as well. Also that last category that uh length of credit history also that you've kept credit card accounts open for a long time reflects positively on your score. Now on the other side some things that can make your credit score go down. That first thing like I've said making late payments that will have uh is the number one thing that will have that negative impact on your credit score. So late payments and other negative items do stay on your credit report for 7 years. They have a declining impact the longer that they're on there. Your credit score can also go down if you have a debt go to collections. And the other uh little note here is if you don't resolve it. So, in some newer scoring models, like I said, lots of different scores, they will actually uh ignore uh collections accounts that have been paid or collections accounts that have a lower balance. And so, if you move if you take action on those collections accounts, pay them, they won't have that impact on your score. Again, borrowing more than 30% of that credit limit, having that higher credit utilization will cause your score to go down. Then with those inquiries, applying for credit does stay on your credit report for 2 years, but it's temporary, only stays for those two years, and has again that declining impact the longer that it's there. Now, these credit scores, as I said, are based on the information that's in your credit reports. Now, how exactly do you get credit reports? So, they're made by three reporting companies. Those are Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. And then your reports are made when someone requests them. And now, not just anyone can request your credit report by certain uh individuals or groups. And so, can be requested by the consumer. And so, that's any of you requesting your own credit report because you have the right to do that. And we're going to go through all of the ways that you can also done by lenders. So, individuals uh giving out credit, specifically credit card companies and others. And some of the others who can do that is landlords um some employers in some states and nonprofit financial counselors. So, if you meet with us for financial counseling, we will pull your credit report and go through it with you. Now, here is where we're going to talk a little bit about inquiries. So, not all inquiries are the same. There are two different kinds of inquiries that you can uh that can happen with your credit report. The first is a hard inquiry. So, this is the one that does have that temporary impact on your credit, but it's not always the kind of inquiry that's happening. A hard inquiry is specifically when you apply for and request a loan or credit card and the lender checks your credit. So, it's when you're officially applying for a line of credit. That is when there's a hard inquiry. Now, soft inquiries don't affect your credit. And these are what happen when you check your credit. Um, if your credit is checked during a financial counseling session or if you've ever gotten a credit card offer in the mail, those companies did a soft credit poll to send that to you to kind of see if you would be potentially qualified for that. But those kind of polls don't have that 2-year impact. You only get that 2-year impact when you formally request that loan or credit card. So there are those different types of inquiries which is important to note. Now it is good to check your credit report at least once a year and this is because the credit report is by no means a perfect record. There can be things that show up there that are incorrect. So it's good to check your credit report to monitor your accounts. Make sure that everything is uh reporting there correctly as you understand. They're not reporting any, you know, late payments where you might have paid on time or there's no accounts that are showing up that you don't recognize cuz if there are any errors, you are able to dispute those. Also allows you to watch for identity theft as well. If there's things showing up you don't recognize, there may have been a breach and you can take action on that. And you're able to get your credit report from a website called annualcreditreport.com and you can get it from all three bureaus. So that's uh Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion every 12 months. And there are some impostors to this site, but the main thing that you want to note is that if they're charging you at any point, it is not annualcreditreport.com. So annualcreditreport.com will always be free. So, this is something to note as well is that your credit report from annualcreditreport.com will not have your credit score. So, you'll need to find another way to get your credit score, which we're going to go into here. But an important note, as I've said here, is there's going to be many scoring models and many different kinds of scores, and you don't necessarily know what score a lender for whatever good and service you're trying to access will look at. So, a good rule of thumb is to find a free credit score that's easy for you to access and just kind of monitor that one as you go forward on your credit journey. And now we'll go into how you can find those different credit scores. So nowadays, many credit card companies apps and banking apps will actually offer a free credit score somewhere in their app where you can see generally actually your full credit report and the score. So you can kind of uh search in there and find it in most cases. or you can go to a nonprofit um financial counselor such as our program where we do pull your credit report uh or credit score during each session to track progress. You can also get your um credit score directly from each of the uh credit reporting agencies by individually making a free account through them. They do also have paid accounts, but you can access your full credit score and track it through them with their free account. There's no reason to do um a paid account to track it. Um and there are free mobile apps where you can see your score, but these free apps do often share your data with advertisers. So, it can just be something to exercise caution if that's not something you're necessarily wanting to do. Now, if you're wanting to improve your credit, you've been engaging with credit and you're wanting to kind of improve from where you're at, the number one thing that I always discuss with clients is to be patient. If you have a negative item, such as a late payment, and you are now continuing to make payments on time, those negative items will eventually fall off after those seven years. And the older it is, the less impact on your score. So having that patience, continuing those good practices going forward is really important thing you can do with improving your credit, but sometimes it can just take time. The next two most important things you can do is paying debt on time and bringing credit card balances to less than 30% of the credit limit. Those are the two biggest things they look at with uh making up your credit score. The next thing is opening a credit card and using it but not carrying that balance, paying attention to that credit utilization. And another thing you could do is potentially getting a secured card. So this is a credit card where you put down a cash deposit first and then that deposit becomes your credit limit and using it and paying it on time can help build credit. You can also join what is called a lending circle. So, this can be a really helpful tool because there isn't a credit check, interest, or any additional fees associated to these loans. And it is what's called a social loan, uh, where you can pay as little as $50 a month for 6 months, and you receive a $30 payout one month during that pay, uh, period until everyone has gotten a turn. Now, some tips to build credit. If you're new to credit and you're wanting to establish it and build it from there, also have some tips for doing that. You can open a card and use it. You can get a secured card like I mentioned previously or you can ask to become an authorized user on someone else's card where you essentially get a copy of their card. But you want to confirm the company's terms for reporting authorized users and kind of how they do that because it can vary depending on the company. You can also join a lending circle as I previously mentioned or you can try what's called a credit builder loan. So, this is a loan that helps you build credit by making small monthly payments. And when you finish paying, you receive the saved loan amount and a record of on-time payments on your credit report. And these last two options, the lending circle and the credit builder loan, are good examples of ways to build credit without the risk of overspending on a credit card if that's a concern for the individual who's wanting to build credit. Now, if you've been using credit and have acquired some debt and want to improve your credit by paying that debt down, we're also going to talk a little bit about how to manage that debt and some tips for how to do so. So the first thing you want to do for um building a plan to get out of debt is you want to first take an accounting to really understand all of the information that you have about those debts. So that's first is going to be listing all of them out. The interest rates, the minimum monthly payment due, and the total balance so you know all of the facts about everything that you owe. The next thing is going to be making a spending plan. This can also be known as a budget. So, this is going to help you in two ways. It's going to help you determine how much you can put towards paying down your debt and also understand your current expenses. It also allows you to track spending so that you can stop adding to debt and uh kind of understand where you might be able to to cut back in your budget. So, the first thing you want to do is you want to determine your current monthly expenses. And there's a number of different ways to do this. You can look at your bank statements, you could use an app, collect your receipts, you can even just write everything down in a notebook that you spend. But the most important thing is you want to take your information from step one being those minimum payments due on your current debts. Then you're going to subtract those expenses from your income and start looking for areas where you might be able to reduce. And you want to look in particular at those flexible expenses. So that would be things like entertainment, dining out, groceries, transportation, those uh expenses where you have control over the total that is spent. And then you want to take any of the extra money from those budget reductions to start applying towards paying down your debt. And you want to pick a debt payoff strategy. And we have two of the common DIY strategies here. So the first is the avalanche method. So this focuses on paying off your most expensive debt or the highest interest rate first. And progress can sometimes feel a little bit slower, but it could save you money because you're focusing on the most expensive debt first. There's also the uh snowball method where you pay off the lowest balance. This can be helpful if you have many different accounts, but it could cost you more money since you're not paying attention to those interest rates. Uh, and then we have a tip here of putting a portion of any tax refunds or bonuses or any other kind of extra money that comes in uh towards your debt to kind of get a jump start. Um, but the important thing here that we kind of have in this graphic that I always like to note is that there's no one correct way to pay off debt. It is really up to you to decide uh what you feel comfortable with as a strategy. And that takes us to the end of our workshop here. We do have a brief survey and we would really appreciate your feedback. So I'll just hold here for a second. Give you guys the opportunity to scan this QR code to give any feedback that you may have. We'd really appreciate it. And then we do have some ideas for next steps. So you can pull your credit reports from annualcreditreport.com. Uh find a credit score at a free site and then if you have debt um cop uh write down what you owe, current expenses, and determine a strategy that feels right for you. And if you need help, you can reach out to us for financial counseling at financial services.org. or we are here to help you reach your financial goals. And then we are going to open it up now for Q&A and then we still have the QR codes for the workshop feedback and the sign-in sheet. So if you haven't had the chance to fill those out, um we have that opportunity still here. Okay. Okay. So Tori Tommy is asking if we can go back to the slide on credit builders. >> Yes, one second. >> Tips to build your credit slide. Sorry, I'm going back. >> Okay. So, I'm going to go back and I'm going to answer questions one by one. So, the first one that we had it was for Tommy. We have two questions for Tommy. So, Tommy, here's the slide. Bills to build your credit. You can open a credit card and use it. Okay. You can become an authorized on someone else credit card. Please, just to make sure that you already review the credit card um credit history, okay? You don't want to be unauthorized on a credit card that been late many times or from someone with a low credit score because that's going to affect your credit. Okay? You can also join a lending circle or a savings loan. There is a few financial institutions that offer this product or you can try any other credit builder. For example, you can apply for a secure credit card or you can try to open a credit card. Um that is going to be easier for application or for like request low credit limit. Uh everything is going to be based on what the information you're using for your application. We are more than happy to help you with that. But also keep in mind that I would recommend you to use for a credit builder whatever works for you first. If you're a person that is afraid of credit or never had credit before, try to manage something that is going to be comfortable for you. For example, like lending circle. If you're ready to go and you're exciting, okay, for your first credit card, always choose um the the one that is going to give you more chance to applicate it. I would never recommend my clients with no credit uh history to apply for, for example, for a very expensive American Express because most probably are not going to get approved and it's going to be a product that is going to be kind of like a little bit more complicated to manage. Uh we have another question for Tammy. How uh putting your credit report affect your credit? If you request your own credit report, it's not going to affect you. Okay. The only inquirers that are going to reflect on your credit are going to be the hard inquirers which mean that you apply for credit and the the the credit institution or the lender is reviewing your info for you to get approved. Okay. There is soft inquires and uh this is related to kit um questions. There is soft inquires that you're going to see on your credit report and you have no idea where those coming from. So, you're going to receive like a bunch of credit cards offer offers on your mail. Well, those are coming mostly from promotions, okay? Or some information that you will share, okay? They may have said they may have access to part of your credit report. H but it's only for promotions. H how Okay, let's go with this um questions that I really uh think is very important to mention. How protect my credit score? Okay, there is a difference between protecting your credit score, protecting your credit report and protecting you to be victim of financial uh scam or identity theft. Okay. So, how to protect your credit score? Protect your credit score reporting like positive information to your credit report. Always pay on time. Try to not apply uh for many credit especially if you don't need it. Try to not use more than 30% of your credit limit. Okay. And but how to avoid others to check my credit score without my consents? If someone has your social security. Okay. So this is a long process. If you are experiencing that right now, you can I would recommend you to immediately uh freeze all your credit report. Okay. Also like if you feel or you are sure that you're being a victim of identity theft and somebody has your all information uh which is pretty common for example if you have roommates or an exartner etc that have had access in the past all your information I would recommend you to report that to your credit reports you can just flag an alert for that you need to create an account with each credit bureaus and alert them and freeze your credit report. Okay, I know those letters, okay, I get notice from different companies that they database was leaked. That's something that happens, okay? Sometimes and they need to report you that it was a leak under information. It doesn't mean that you're that you were victim of identity theft. It just mean that your information was compromised. Okay. So again, just go right away, go and follow the process and freeze your credit report. Okay. If you're thinking that the issue is more than that, so you're experienc um review that info with you. Scarlet, thank you so much for complete the survey and I'm so glad that you track your credit score. We're going to be sharing the presentation. What do you recommend when you have a budget to pay off the debt but the interest rates are close to 30%. So there is many ways that you can manage this situation. Okay, you can contact your creditors and you can request open an agreement on that account and that's ideally what I will recommend you and then we can explore more recommendations based on your situation. Okay? Erh it could be uh an account that can be negotiated with your creditors and you may close and request a repayment plan but just to make sure that you manage the interest rate first and they agree to low that interest rate. What if you have established credit but you need to build the credit score? Uh uh to build your credit score is going to take six months. Okay. of report you apply for any credit builder and then the credit bureaus are going to report are they the creditors are going to report to the credit bureaus but you need six month okay of reporting to build your credit. Uh if you need to increase your credit score we need to check what accounts you have. What is your opinion on getting a personal loan as opposed to loan through the DOA? Um um I'm not sure what is that company u but you can send me an email so I can check if it's a particular loan or company. I I'm sorry I'm may not have any opinion about it. What I cannot help you is just to review the agreement and to see if it's not the predator lender. Also, can you please what affect the credit score for 7 years or your negative information? Your negative information remain on your credit report for seven years. Okay. and will affect you over time less. But the the negative information is going to remain on your credit report no matter what. If it's legit, okay, there is no way that that's going to be deleted. Okay? You can keep improving your credit and there is many ways that we can balance negative information with positive information. But that information is going to remind some people and this is when the scams get in and they offer delete that info. For example, like if you have a late payment for any reason and you didn't contact your credittor right away and ask them if they're willing to report that account as a current. Unfortunately, that's not going to be my sorry that's not going to be deleted. Okay. So, but don't let that uh affect you that much. Okay. You can improve over time and there is many ways that creditors are going to look at your credit report and they can also analyze the negative information on your report. Oh, sorry to already replied. You will be blocked from banking using your credit when you reflex. Uh, I used to find errors is my experience. Credit report. I request them to review and indicate where is wrong, but they insist they don't see anything wrong. How do I fix it? Um, Maggie, uh, I need to check. There is many things that could happen here. for my experience there is um things that could happen. Okay, maybe we need to submit proof. Okay. Uh of what is wrong. For example, like my name um there is a name reported to me. Maybe it doesn't belong to me or you know my name has an error. I need some proof for that dispute uh to be correct and also how we write the dispute. H but you can contact us. We can schedule an appointment and we can actually focus on the previous dispute that you have. H I have experience that I've been helping clients to yeah just dispute and uh sometimes I need to fight a little bit more. Okay. Sometime I say like maybe the dispute was not filed correctly like they don't verify like the proof that I sent always keep like a screenshot of proof that you already sent everything. Uh but we can review what what what or why they deny um your dispute or the error to be correct. Uh what kind of credit builders? Yes. Right. Where's the focal point? Yeah. Um this is very important. Thank you for so much for that comment, Tommy. H if you're late, always keep your creditors uh informed of your situation. Okay, you like it or not, you have a relationship with your creditors and it could be like an, you know, like a very complicated situationship, but you have a financial relationship with your creditors. So, keep them informed of what's going on with you. Keep an informed why you might be late on on your payment. Okay? uh your creators are more than willing to work and help you out for that negative information not be reporter. Okay, but it's very important like if they contact you, you pick up the phone and explain it to them. H it's better to deal with your creditor first than dealing with collection agencies later. Okay. But for example, like it and this is not something that not everybody knows like if you're late in a payment, you experience a hardship. Uh sometime creditors offer you a hardship plan. Okay? And sometimes uh you can look at the website, you can look the agreement, but they can verbally offer you a repayment plan or they can help you to go through that. So what time is it? Uh yeah, he's 100% sure like keep them informed. For example, like if you lose your job, if you have any medical emergency, uh if you are going through divorce, there is many requirements that you need to meet to apply for a hardship plan, a formal hardship plan with your creditors. But a lot of people don't know when they apply for credit that that's um that's one of the options. Okay. If you experience a hardship and you cannot meet with your payments or and and be current with your creditors at the end of the month. I think we have answered everything right now. If there's any other final questions, your creditors are prepared for that. Okay? They know. They know the risk that they gone through once they approve you for a car loan, for a credit card, anything. Okay? They know. Like they know they're prepared for that. But keep them informed. Okay? like if you don't pick up the phone or and and that's very common. Okay, dealing with these situations can be really hard. Okay, I'm not saying like you know you didn't pick up the phone because you want to be rude to them. You don't want to pay and you know you don't care. No, it could be a hard situation to deal like having someone you know like and telling them that you cannot pay. Uh maybe you feel like you need to overshare your situation, which is not going to happen. Your creditors just want to know if you forget to pay your credit card. They want to know like if you may apply for a hardship or they can give you a grace period. Okay? So, but always keep your creditors informed. Whatever thing you tell them, I promise they are prepared for that. Okay? and they rather work with you than send or sell that account to collection. Uh credits can be a little bit complicated. Uh when I say track your credit score, uh something that is very important for me to mention my clients is like credit your credit report and your credit score only matters to you. Okay? Only matters to you and your creditors. Okay? Doesn't matter to anyone. So it's important for you to track your credit score but not get obsessed about like how improve your credit score like 5.35 especially if you already reach the 800. Okay those of 50 points um uh those 50 point to reach the highest score is usually the highest one. So track your score uh but always trust that the information that is on your credit score always important for you first. Okay. Your credit score is also a guidance for you to know like how you can compromise yourself with another uh another loan. How you can compromise yourself if you want to upgrade your credit card. So if you want to have a credit card premium always check your credit card for yourself. Okay. Do you ever feel like somebody's looking at your credit score like you walk on the street and everybody knows that? I think it's pretty much old school. Uh but it's important to keep those balance. Okay. Track and if you see like for example like your credit card is going down and you don't know what's going on, put your credit report right away. It could be something reported to you that doesn't belong to you. It could be a bill like you moved two years ago and you forgot to pay or you didn't know and they never reported. Okay, I have seen that. If we do have any other questions, I know credit sometimes looks pretty simple, sometimes can be really complicated. I don't think there's any other questions. I think we Korea builder sources. Yeah. And if you're struggling with your payments, if you're struggling to manage your debt, if there is something that you don't understand or if you're anxious, you don't want to look at your credit report, you are afraid, okay, to go to one credit report and pull your credit, contact us. You don't have to do it by yourself. Okay, that's our job here to make it easier for you and for you to enjoy it and get more acknowledge about like how manage. Don't you ever let your credit control you. You can always control your credit. But yeah, I don't think we don't have any other questions. Thanks Andrea and Tori. That was really great. I um want to echo what you were both saying about how it's so important for folks to um not get overwhelmed by credit because there's just so much out there that can be overwhelming about credit. You know, not knowing how to read your credit report or not knowing all the different resources that can be out there to help you or, you know, the reverse, you know, all the people trying to take advantage of your credit. So, um, yeah, definitely feel free to reach out to Tori and Andrea. You know, they can help you pull your credit, um, credit report and walk through it with you to make sure you understand everything that's on there. Um, they can also, you know, make sure everything that's on there with you actually belongs on there, you know, because there are so many instances where either there are just errors on credit reports or maybe there is some sort of like um like maybe you've been the victim of identity theft or something like that, you know, they can help you um work through that, help you to dispute those errors. And I've I was seeing, you know, in the chat and and they addressed the question of somebody was saying they've already tried to dispute the error and the credit bureau is trying to tell them, "Nope, it's correct." So, you know, definitely make an appointment with one of our financial counselors and they can help you um sort through that um and help, you know, provide some guidance and and help um you know, they I feel like there are even situations where they've gotten on the phone like a three-way conversation with the creditor, with the client, too. And so, um, just know that you are not alone. They will, you know, help help work with you on whatever your situation is. And, um, you'll co-create a financial action plan to figure out what's going to be the best thing for your situation. Um, >> but yeah, thank you so much for our services are free. Sorry, we have one more request. Yeah, Tommy. Our services are free. >> Yeah, the services are free and yeah, no pressure. We're very respectful with everyone's process. So, and everybody's welcome. So, if you need to and you want to, please contact us. >> Thanks, Andrea. Um, so to reiterate, um, our San Francisco financial counseling program is provided um for free to anyone who lives, works, or receives services in San Francisco. And that is to make sure that we are Yeah. Our like Andrea was saying, our service is open to as many people as possible. There's no income bracket requirements. There's no documentation status requirements. As long as you either live, work, or receive some kind of service here in San Francisco, then you are eligible. So yes, please reach out to us um and yeah, make schedule an appointment today. I also just wanted to flag for folks we will be having um another webinar next month um around oh sorry uh around um FAFSA uh and that is going to be um sorry I'm like scrambling for the date here oh here it is okay so it's uh FAFSA the key to unlocking financial aid so if you are a student or if you have a student you know um it's going to be on September 3rd and we're going to teach you all about um share more diff uh share more information and practical tips on completing the federal application for student aid application um to make sure that you you know how to do that accurately and on time as well as um use that to unlock access to grants, scholarships, and other forms of financial aid. So yeah, thanks so much for for joining us today. Um, we're going to be sharing the recording along with the slides from today's presentation. Um, and yeah, some of the other resources that we've we've shared and and that Jonathan has been dropping in the chat for you all. Um, Jonathan, did you have anything to close that you wanted to share? >> Um, just thank you everyone for joining us and thank you Tori and Andrea um for that great presentation. >> Awesome. Thanks so much everyone. and have a great rest of your afternoon. Take care.