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The current rough state of economy doesn’t mean that there will be absolutely no finance jobs. It just means that the finance jobs will be fewer, and the competition for them will be steeper. So if you are a finance professional, and happen to be looking for a finance job in these tough economic times, here are three steps, which if properly taken, can push you ahead of the pack in the competition for the few finance jobs available.

1.     Update Your Skill Set. Unique circumstances call for unique skills, if one is to sail through them successfully. Most professionals looking for the top finance jobs right now are equipped with skill-sets which were adequate for the better times, but which might be considered inadequate for the current circumstances. Simply put, to beat your competitors in the search for top finance jobs, you will need to have skills that they don’t have. Having a unique skill-set gives an employer a reason to consider you for a job in preference to another candidate. And this applies whether you are looking for the top finance jobs in the financial sector, the middle office finance jobs in governments and non-profit organizations or even for the more ordinary commerce and industry accounting jobs.  The unique skills in question need not be anything really fancy. Having, for example, a certificate in project management (which you can earn in a couple of weeks) puts you ahead of another candidate without such a certificate, even if you have the same basic qualification. Similarly if you are looking for commerce and industry accounting jobs, you might be well advised to approach the potential employer armed with at least some basic understanding of the workings of the business or industry you are considering working in. Armed with such a basic understanding of the underlying industry or business puts you at least one step ahead of another equally qualified finance expert who lacks such understanding.

2.     Work on Your Resume. The presentation of your resume can make a great difference in your search for top finance jobs, and is likely to have an influence on the employer, even before they get to look at its contents.  You might consider enlisting the help of a professional resume service, to help with the presentation of your resume. Remember the number of otherwise qualified candidates who get otherwise shoved out of the recruitment process simply because of poor resume presentation is huge – ensure you don’t fall for the same trap.

3.     Consider enlisting the help of a finance recruitment agency. In a bid to reduce the workload involved in the recruitment process, many employers are increasingly turning to recruitment agencies for their staffing needs. This is especially true for executive jobs, like the top finance jobs, whose recruitment process might involve some level of head-hunting, and which employers might feel uneasy doing themselves, preferring to delegate it to recruitment agencies instead. Many employers are also increasingly turning to these finance recruitment agencies even for jobs which don’t necessarily involve head-hunting, like commerce and industry accounting jobs and other middle office finance jobs. This means that anyone looking for any sort of finance job is best advised to at least deposit their resume with the one of the major finance recruitment agencies. These finance recruitment agencies usually charge very nominal fees for their services, and the services they provide are very often worth what they charge.

No Success Without a Budget

Effective credit repair is a multi-dimensional process. Your credit report is just the final outcome. If you want to repair your credit you need to start with your finances. You must develop a budget. A budget is a powerful personal financial tool, and you can’t succeed without it. Get a pen and paper. Get serious. List every expense you have, from essential to entertainment. You should examine your checkbook and your credit card statements. Whatever you spend money on should be included.

You Must Plan to Save

Compare your income with your expenses. This can be a wake-up call for people starting a credit repair program. If you are spending more than you earn, credit problems are guaranteed. But this exercise is not about getting your expenses to match your income – there is a bit more to it; you must organize your budget to allow 10% of your income to be deposited into a savings account. If this seems difficult you should reevaluate your priorities. Life brings surprises, and without a cushion the first unexpected expense can undo your credit repair efforts. If you want to succeed you need to save.

The Details of Credit Repair

It’s time to roll up your sleeves. Get all three of your reports and examine them individually; treat each credit bureau report as an individual project. This is not just about identifying obvious derogatory information. There are many factors that affect your credit scores, and you can’t afford to miss anything. Some of the most important and often neglected issues include duplicate accounts listings, understated high credit limits, erroneous open dates, multiple collections for the same account, and derogatory information reporting beyond the seven year limit.

Consider a Credit Repair Service – Or Read a Book!

The majority of problems that depress credit scores are FCRA compliance violations like those listed above. If you feel lost hire a competent credit repair service, or take the time to read a good book on the subject. One of the great misunderstandings about credit repair is that you only need to identify unfamiliar data and send dispute letters to the credit bureaus. This is of little use and may leave you worse off than before. But this is not to say you can’t repair your own credit. Just take the time to learn to do it right. One of my favorite books on the subject starts with a very valid warning to “do nothing until you have read this whole book”.

Credit Repair Clean Up Time

Once you have identified every item that is not in compliance with the FCRA it’s time to clean up the mess. If you hire a credit repair service this will be handled for you, but if you are doing it yourself there are a few things you should know. The credit bureaus are not in the business of cleaning up errors on your report. There are over 200 million Americans with credit files at each of the credit bureaus, and billions of transactions reported to each bureau every week. The credit reporting system is not perfect. In fact over 75% of all credit reports include errors.

Understanding Disputes

Without FCRA enforcement, the credit bureaus would do nothing to rectify this problem. Correcting errors is inconvenient for the credit bureaus, and they have made a science out of minimizing dispute related costs. The FCRA is designed primarily to protect consumers from life altering errors that are generated by the credit reporting system, but it also very even-handed and crafted in such a way as to insure that regulation does not overly disrupt the credit bureaus ability to operate profitably. Fair enough.

The Credit Bureaus Have Rights Too

The credit bureaus will process your disputes, but they will also exercise every right they have to ignore your request. A competent credit repair service will manage your disputes in a way designed to produce optimal results; the factors that influence the willingness of the bureaus to process a request include the clarity of the request, the number of items disputed, and the timing of repeated disputes. If you are repairing your own credit and want to succeed you need to understand the legal rights of the credit bureaus and to manage your disputes accordingly.

Rebuilding For Credit Repair Success

There is a lot of satisfaction in cleaning up your credit report. But the credit repair process is not complete until your credit scores qualify you for the best possible financing. Remember that credit is a means to an end; it must be usable. If your credit repair efforts have left you with little or no open credit, it’s time to rebuild. The easiest way to build new credit is with secured credit cards. Secured cards can be very powerful tools, but it is crucial that you keep your balances down. The ideal is to keep the balance below 20% of your high credit limit. Many people let their balance approach the limit and wonder why their credit scores are so low. If you do it right you will be amazed at the results.

Copyright © 2007 James W. Kemish. All Content. All Rights Reserved.

In this tough economy, when every dollar counts, it is crucial to learn how to do credit repair yourself. Each and every day, thousands of desperate people are needlessly running to credit repair agencies spending hundreds, even thousands of dollars trying to get their credit up to par.

But it really isn’t that difficult at all to repair credit yourself if you know the basic things that most credit repair services would otherwise do for you for a fee.

If you aren’t aware of those simple actions, here are 5 quick and easy steps to do credit repair yourself.

1. Access a copy of your credit report – you are entitled to a copy of your credit report for free once a year. You can access it in the mail, by phone, or even online. Although you get this free credit report, be sure to also get your credit scores along with your report, as this is the foundation for doing credit repair for yourself.

2. Check your credit report for errors – this is one of the biggest factors that credit repair agencies bank on – the mistakes that can you easy remove yourself while you’re in the process of credit repair. Look for wrong addresses, wrong social security numbers, accounts with balances that you’ve already paid off, and even accounts with late payments that were actually made on time.

3. Negotiate account payoffs – here’s another area that you are typically charged for by credit repair agencies which you can avoid by doing the credit repair yourself. All you have to do is call your creditors on collection or past due accounts and ask them to settle with you. Just let them know that you will pay off the balance, but that you are only able to pay a certain amount. If the creditor agrees, you have just saved a few hundred dollars and you now have a zero balance on that account.

4. Raise your credit limits – you may be asking yourself, “How can raising your credit limits help when you are doing credit repair yourself?” The magic about this is that 30 percent of your credit score is directly impacted by the balance on your account compared to the limit on that account. So there is only two ways to change this aspect of your credit score. Either you pay down the balance or you raise up the credit limit. Either can give you an equal result when doing credit repair yourself.

5. Continue monitoring your credit score – here’s where most people miss it big time. They take the initial actions to repair their credit themselves, but then they never follow up to be certain that those actions really helped their credit scores. That’s the pitfall of doing credit repair yourself; you may not have a good system for following through until you get the results in your credit that you are looking for. The best tool to use here is a calendar and simply putting reminders every one to two months to check your credit report and credit scores again.

As you can see, these are all simple steps that will guide you along the way to do the credit repair yourself. If you can do these 5 simple steps, then you have just saved yourself hundreds of dollars by not having others do it for you.

Setting up a home-based business may be a more cost-effective alternative to setting up a major company, but it may still drain the limited resources of a small business owner. To keep the business going, small business loans will definitely be necessary. These can be availed of through credit card services. This article will show you how.

First, you need to set up your home based business. Do your research on the type of business you want to establish. Find out what licensing and zoning requirements you need to meet and ensure that you meet them all. Do not attempt to cut corners here.

Get the services of an accountant, even if only on a consultancy basis, to help you set up your books and records correctly from the start. Ask for help in determining deductions so that you can plan on your business expenses. Establish a routine for keeping strict records of all income and expenses right from day one. Keep all business related receipts, invoices, client records, bank statements, bank deposit slips and canceled checks.

Being home-based, you need to set aside a particular place in your home just for your business. Make sure it can accommodate all the necessary equipment. Check that you have the appropriate electrical outlets and have them installed if needed to avoid overloading your system. Set up rules to keep the area insulated from household noise and disturbances.

Have a business phone installed that is separate from your residential line. Avoid having your children answer the business line. Install an answering machine to take calls when you are out or occupied.

Get a post office box so that you can use that address in your official stationery and other documents, keeping your business profile professional. Hold client meetings in rented conference rooms or set business meetings in good restaurants.

One of the most important steps in setting up your home-based business is to acquire credit card services that will enable you to accept credit card payments and debit card payments. These credit card services provide all the necessary software and hardware for you to be able to process payments in person, online or by phone. This step alone already expands the customer base that you can access.

Credit card services will also serve you well once your home-based business begins to feel the need for additional capital. When you need to get small business loans, you will not have to approach banks which are most likely not sympathetic to small home-based businesses.

The need for small business loans usually comes when the home-based business is already at least a year old. At such time, your home-based business would have created an average monthly credit card sales record with your credit card services company. You can refer to that when you approach your credit card services company for small business loans, sometimes called cash advances.

Credit card services do offer small business loans to their clients based on average monthly credit card sales, without the need for any collateral. The aforementioned average monthly credit card sales guarantee your company’s capability to pay the small business loans. Payments will be automatically deducted as a percentage of future credit card sales. This arrangement frees you from worrying about the amortization for your small business loans, too.

As soon as you pay up your small business loans completely, you are automatically eligible for new small business loans for as long as your home-based business is getting a good monthly average in credit card sales. With the help of credit card services, you can continue to expand and grow your home-based business.

A HOAX? Have you seen the commercials about identity theft wrecking a person’s credit? Well, the truth is that if it happens to you, you can get a brand new social security number from the Social Security Administration. You can be sure that the people who make those commercials don’t want you to know about that!

The following two quotes are from the Federal Trade Commission:

“Your credit repair: self help may be best.”

“Credit repair services have been a big problem for consumers. Credit repair firms typically charge hundreds of dollars for their ongoing services, but don’t deliver on their promises.

The Scam: Everyday, companies nationwide, appeal to consumers with poor credit histories. They promise, for a fee, to clean up your credit report so you can get a car loan, a home mortgage, insurance, or even a job. The truth is, they can’t deliver. After you pay them hundreds or thousands of dollars in fees, these companies do nothing to improve your credit report; most simply vanish with your money.”

End of Federal Trade Commission quotes.

You don’t need to pay firms or attorneys to send out form letters once a month that get limited results. Credit reporting agencies recognize these form letters, and treat them accordingly. It’s better, cheaper and faster if you do your own credit repair.

Below is a complete advanced strategy that anyone can use to repair their credit. It should be sufficient to for most credit repair situations.

Here are the three simple steps you will use to repair your credit. It’s easy. I’ll go into detail later in this article.

1. Obtain your three credit reports. Each credit bureau must furnish everyone with a credit report once a year, if it is requested.

2. Review the reports and locate the negative items. Reading the information on a credit report takes a little effort, but it’s not hard.

3. Dispute the items that you want removed or corrected.

Repairing your credit is not as intimidating, or difficult, as it might seem. It’s as easy as writing a few very simple letters. The best letters are short and direct. This point is very important, and I want you to remember it: “the best letters are short, simple, direct, AND DO NOT look like form letters.” Never offer any explanations whatsoever, unless you are giving an explanation of a negative entry in a credit bureau file that you have been unable to repair.

Your BIG GUN is “Debt Validation.” It is the primary tool you will use when repairing your credit. If a credit reporting agency does not properly validate a debt within thirty (30) days of your request, they must remove the entry from your file. “The time limit is often the key to success for repairing your credit.”

Credit bureaus are merely big filing cabinets that take in vast amounts of information every day. They don’t have the time or resources to check all of the information which comes in on a daily basis. Frequently, the information is wrong, and they never question it!

Here are some things that they would rather you don’t know.

- Credit reporting agencies are subject to the Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1971 and the Consumer Credit Reporting Reform Act of 1996.

- Each item in your credit file must be proven or it cannot remain in the file. If the credit bureau cannot validate the item, it must be removed from your file, whether it’s true, or not. Validation is not simply, “yep, they said it’s yours.” It takes some actual effort.

- Every negative entry on your report can be denied or challenged at any time. The bureau must reinvestigate and if that item cannot be verified within a “reasonable amount of time”, (30 days) it must be removed from the file. However, they do have an option to deem your request “frivolous” under certain conditions.

- Many times the creditor does not re-validate in the time allowed, or the credit bureau is busy and does not handle your dispute properly. The disputed entry must then be deleted.

- The older an item is, the more difficult validation is. It is possible it cannot be validated because records may no longer exist after a year or two.

- As of September of 2005, all credit reporting agencies must provide one copy of each individual’s credit report every year, upon request. The three major nationwide consumer reporting companies have set up one central website and a toll-free telephone number, through which you can order your free annual report.

To order your free credit reports, go to www.annualcreditreport.com or call 877-322-8228. You must obtain copies of your credit report from all three of these major credit reporting agencies. You should do this every year.

NOTE: These companies ARE ALLOWED to charge you for your “credit score.” They don’t like doing anything for free. But, you DO NOT need your credit score.

A free report is all you need. You only need to see the entries that other people have put in your file. Remove negative entries, and your credit scores will automatically improve.

The Credit Bureaus want you to do everything online. Other than getting your reports online from www.annualcreditreport.com, DO NOT contact the Credit Bureaus online at any time. You must use the postal service for ANY credit repair strategy to work.

When you have received and reviewed your credit report, follow these instructions for any negative entries. Send a very brief letter by certified mail with the following information.”I am disputing this item (or these items) on my credit report. (insert a sentence here which explains why you are disputing the items, ie “you are mis-reporting the information,” or “this account is not mine,” etc.) Please verify and validate it (them).”

NOTE: the word “verify” is a very special and strong legal word. In Black’s Law Dictionary, fifth edition, it is defined, “To confirm or substantiate by oath or affidavit.”

Always use the word verify, in any type of dispute letter. You will probably never go to court over a credit dispute, but if you do, it may be important that you have used the word “verify” in your letters. You will need to make it part of the court record that you asked for verification, and that you know its legal definition.

VALIDATION: A COPY of the original contract with your signature on it is NOT validation. It is no more valid than a copy of a $100 bill, or a copy of one of your checks. Anyone can copy your signature.

There is case law involving The Fair Debt Collections Practices Act, which states that validation of the debt can either be a signed judgment order, or an accounting which is signed and dated by the person responsible for maintaining the account general ledger. Credit reporting agencies should be held to the same rules for validation. I’ve never had to go to court for this, but I have successfully used these validation standards for my own clients.

Back to your own credit repair. When the credit reporting agencies receive your dispute letters, they will check the item, or items, that you dispute, and give a brief reply. They have a total of 30 days from the receipt of the original certified mail you sent to them, asking for verification. Wait until there are only 10 days left, and send another certified letter stating: Your alleged validation is not sufficient to show that I am a debtor to that creditor. Remove the entry from my file.

They will have insufficient time to check it out, and they must remove it from your file. If for some odd reason they do provide sufficient validation, it must be 100% accurate, or they must remove that information from your file.

ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS – only communicate with these people in writing thru the mail. An old axiom is “if it isn’t written, it wasn’t said.”

1. Always send certified letters that make them sign a card when they receive your letter.

2. Always keep copies of everything in a special folder, just in case you ever need to go to court.

3. Always demand an updated copy of your file after the negative items have been removed.

About dispute letters:

- You want to make your letters to look “unprofessional,” so that you don’t raise any Red Flags with the credit bureaus.
- Do not use dispute forms or file numbers provided by the bureau.
- Do not use a “fill in the blanks” form letter.
- Do not use a letterhead.
- Instead, send a simple handwritten letter, or a letter printed from your computer.

WARNING: Do not dispute more than three (3) items on your credit report at any one time. Also, wait sixty (60) days before disputing any other items on your report. There are laws in place which allow the credit reporting agencies to deem your disputes as frivolous if they detect that you are trying to eliminate all negative information on your file.

A word about bankruptcy and other legal items in the public records on your credit report. These items are almost impossible to get off your report without using more advanced strategies.

It is unlikely that you will vastly improve your credit score in thirty days as some promise, but you should see some solid improvement in thirty days. Everyone’s situation is different. In some cases that need only two or three corrections, thirty days might do it.