Credit Repair | Your Legal Leg Up

Enjoy some Free Time

June 8, 2018

41 Things You Can Do for Free

A big part of America’s debt problem is systemic – we live in an economic system that exploits people and takes from the poor to give to the rich. However, that’s at the “macro” level. At the individual level, one part of the problem is that we are taught that the only way to be fulfilled or feel valuable is to consume things. To spend. And many people find it difficult to pass a day without spending a lot of money. They can’t think of things to do, and if they do, it may leave them feeling unfulfilled.

Even if you have it to spend, it can be liberating not to do that. It’s important to break that cycle.

Below is a list of things, almost all of which are almost free. Nothing, in a sense, is actually free, since as long as you’re alive you’re burning calories and needing a place to live, and for many, those things cannot be taken for granted. Likewise, electricity and internet bandwidth are negligible for most people these days, but they’re not completely free. But once those things are covered, most of the things below are actually free – or very nearly so – with the one spectacular exception of Six Flags.

I explain the reason for its inclusion below, and that reasoning would also perhaps apply to many types of memberships. I would caution you against too many things like that, though, because they do imply an expense that can be quite substantial. Six Flags, as I point out, is NOT free even in the scenario I posit. We do like to keep the expense of any one trip to a minimum, however, and that can be basically free.

My list does not include some items many people’s lists do include, things like watching television in your man-cave or window-shopping at Saks Fifth Avenue or the like. That’s because these things are first cousins to expense, and they are indulgences that will likely eventually lead to your feeling the need to buy stuff. They’re a part of our consumption-based culture, and they imply the previous purchase of expensive things, or the envy or admiration of others who have expensive things. My list is designed to take you out of the consumption-oriented world and to a simpler, truly less expensive place.

Free Things

Spend time with your children. They only stay young for a while – heck, YOU only stay young for a while. Enjoy the time you have with the ones most precious to you.
Spend time with other children. See the above. Children have such an amazing gift to give. Did you know that most adults don’t ever really look at children? I mean, as in, seriously paying attention to them. If you do, it’s like shining a bright light into their life – they instantly notice and almost always reward you spectacularly. Look at them in the eyes and hold the look when they notice. Do something funny and see what happens.
We have a free zoo, and it’s hard to beat that for both animal and people-watching.
Walk down train tracks. Don’t you think there’s something really romantic about trains? Maybe it’s the thunder, maybe the rhythm, but for me, watching a moving train is exciting. Walking along the tracks makes me think of all the places I’ve been or could go.
Go to the gym. It’s a nice way to spend a couple of hours, and then you get the endorphin rush and long-term health benefits, too. My gym costs me $150 for two years, so – not free, but pretty inexpensive.
Paint a picture, or draw one. If you try to draw something and get it right, you will notice how much you have to focus in order to do it. It’s pleasing, you forget yourself, and actually – anybody can do it.
Write a story. Kind of like painting a picture. You might think it takes talent to do this, and to some extent you might be right – but maybe you have the talent, and even if you don’t, it can be fun.
Have a campfire. If you’re near a place where you can do that, it’s hard to beat, sometimes.
Go for a long walk. Everybody thinks of this, but you could actually do it.
Create a page on Pinterest and start pinning things you like.
Make a list of things you like that are free. It doesn’t cost anything, and it reminds you of things that make you feel better.
Pet your dog or cat. They love it – as much as you can stand. And that’s why you have them.
Call your mom or dad. Talk to them and tell you how you’re really doing. Ask them how they are.
Write an old-fashioned snail mail letter. Technically not free if you send it, but very, very inexpensive! And people love to get personal mail.
Write an email. Free, but not as special in my opinion. On the other hand, it is instant gratification and is more likely to stimulate a quick response.
Google something freaky and read all about it.
Bring up the latest freaky thing you googled in a conversation and impress your friends.
Start a blog. You can write about the freaky things you google. That would probably gain you a cult following.
Do a Youtube video. It isn’t hard. You can do a video with your phone, edit it on your computer, and upload to a free Youtube site.
Get up really early. Other people like to mention naps, and I considered them and including going to bed early in this list, and those things have their place, but what about getting up early and watching the sunrise? That’s pretty cool. If you get up early enough, you can hear the birds start to sing. Do you know that birds either are dinosaurs or closely related to them? They’ve been around a very, very long time!
Make some art out of stuff you found.
Teach a child to read. There’s nothing in the world like opening up someone else’s world. Or you could teach them other stuff.
Enjoy a cup of tea in silence. Technically not free, but again, very, very inexpensive! And it’s one of the great simple pleasures. There is joy in silence. You DON’T always have to be hooked in.
Organize something that needs organization. For me, there are always a lot of things I could do along these lines, but for some it might be harder to find things that need organizing.
Join a Meet-up group. Do you know that there are people getting together and doing just about anything you can think of? They aren’t free to organize, but they’re usually free to attend.
Go to a high school football, soccer, basketball, or tennis game. It’s actually fun even if you don’t care who wins. You might see someone you know, and it’s cool to watch people really trying hard to do well.
Go to a college music recital. My son plays piano, and twice a year all the students of his teacher put on a recital as part of their musical development. It is amazing. First, it’s incredible to watch people trying hard to do anything, and second, the level of talent that’s all around us is one of those miracles we don’t pay much attention to. But we should. And the music is beautiful and probably not what you listen to most of the time. Music recitals are different than art openings or shows, by the way. Something about performance.
Do something that you do really well. A lot of times we learn how to do stuff and then we move on. But whatever you’re good at, do more.
Do something you’re really bad at. Give yourself permission to try something new. You know, with practice you could probably do it really well. Give yourself the freedom to consider that.
Get a library card and use it. Libraries have so much stuff! We had to make more use of libraries because my son can read so fast – he reads five times as fast as I do, and there’s no way to buy him books. He’s done by the time we get out of the bookstore half of the time. But he can check out ten books at a time if he wants, and that will keep him busy for a week. I might even get one myself. Plus there are movies there, too, sometimes.
Play a card game or board game. Don’t gamble because that involves money. Enjoy the game itself.
Read a book. This can be free at the library, and there are also a lot of free things on Kindle or the internet more generally. At the library, you can walk around and look at dozens of books before you choose one. It’s amazing how big the world is. And then you choose one, and you will spend hours doing something that’s good for you, pleasurable, and free. Even if you went to a bookstore and bought one, it would still be very inexpensive per hour of enjoyment.
Get a season pass to Six Flags. This is not free, not even close, really, except for this: if you buy it at the right time, you can get a whole season pass, plus parking for the season, for the same or even less than you’d spend on a single day pass. If you do it that way, it’s a great bargain, and by the time you’ve been there three or four times, it starts to feel free. Riding a roller coaster is one of the great thrills of our childhood. I’ve discovered that they’re still a lot of fun.
Spend all morning in bed with your sweetheart. It’s almost too obvious to mention, isn’t it? But they’re our lovers for a reason. Taking the time with them is one of the great things we can forget about in all the hustle and bustle of life.
Walk in the park on a summer evening. Listen to the sounds. Or walk in the winter and listen – really listen – to the silence. With many billion people on the planet, how can things feel so quiet an alone? Amazing.
Make popcorn. Technically, not free, but you’re rarely going to create debt problems based on a popcorn habit. If you control the amount of salt and oil, it isn’t bad for you at all.
Plant a garden. Watch the expenses on this! But if you stay moderate, this is mostly free and eventually pays off. I like herbs like basil, peppermint and rosemary, all of which are easy to grow, and tomatoes and beans, which are both cheap and pretty easy.
Publish a story on Kindle. I’m not saying it’s important to publish or sell anything. I’m saying you could, and it’s free. It can open up a whole new can of worms for you.
Volunteer to help with old people. People in nursing homes can get so lonely, and spending time at an old folk’s home can be humbling and invigorating at the same time. It will make you think twice about a lot of things.
Learn your rights. This is not a product promotion, but you are invited to watch videos and read articles on my site. If you have debt problems at all, you will find interesting reading. If you don’t have debt problems but are interested in the legal system, you will also find interesting reading. And if you’re interested in something else, just do a search and find a site with info that will be interesting to you. Go there.
Listen to an old time radio show. Do you know that there are thousands of old-time radio shows free to be had in the form of mp3 downloads? Back in the 1920s through 40s, before television really got big, radio shows were a major form of entertainment, and a lot of them were pretty great. Our favorite is the Adventures of Sam Spade, Detective. These shows were always witty and had great action and drama. My mother loved them as a child, and it was a nightly ritual for me as a kid to listen to radio theater too (already old and mostly gone then). Now my son listens to a show almost every night, too.

Credit Repair – Life after Debt

June 7, 2018

Defeat the debt collectors in lawsuits, end debt problems, and repair and restore your credit.

If you have had debt problems and struggled to find your way back to stability, or if you are in the process of making your way back into stability, you almost certainly have damage to your credit report that is holding you back. And this is particularly true of debt litigation.

It may be hurting you in ways you don’t even know about.

Simply put, a good credit rating is the “key to the kingdom,” your way back to the good life you either had before or always wanted.

We here at Your Legal Leg Up don’t really encourage anybody, at any time, to borrow any money. Ever. But we do realize that not everybody shares that opinion. Even if you do, however, your credit rating matters in so many ways and affects you in everything from the rates you pay on your loans to whether you can get certain jobs and where you live.

A bad credit rating is like an invisible, but very heavy, tax on your hopes and dreams. Even if you are still in litigation, you should be taking steps to repair your credit and remove that tax.

Fix It

Credit repair – correcting and improving the information in your credit report, is possible and can be done by following a series of steps that is not too complicated or difficult. The Credit Repair Manual is designed to give you all the information you need to do this yourself as well as if you hired a company to do it for you. In fact, since the bureaus and information furnishers are not required to do some things for professional companies that they would have to do for you, you can do it better for yourself than the professionals can do it for you..

And save hundreds of dollars while you’re at it.

We Can Help

All you need is the right information and the willingness and energy to use it. We can supply the information better than anyone else.

Two Kinds of Verification – FDCPA and FCRA- and How to Use them

June 5, 2018

We have spent much of our time talking about “verification” on our site and videos, and what we have meant in most of that has been the “verification” process provided by the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA). But there is another kind of validation you can use – validation as permitted by the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

We talk about that below and discuss how you can use both forms of validation, together or separately, to your advantage in defending yourself from the debt collectors and in repairing your credit.

The two kinds of verification are different rights. They apply in different circumstances, to possibly different “persons” under different circumstances, give different rights, and have different time requirements.

You can use them both, but they are completely separate. It is important to keep them straight.

Make sure you keep track of everything you do under either statute, and make sure that the response you get is appropriate for the statute you used for the specific right you invoke.

Rights under the FDCPA

Under the FDCPA, when a debt collector first contacts you on a debt, it is required by law to notify you of your right to dispute the debt and require “validation” or “verification.” The two words are used interchangeably, and the requirement is quite simple in general:

First, the debt collector must notify you of the right to dispute within 30 days (along with giving you the “mini-Miranda” warning – that anything you say may be used for collection of a debt) within five days of first contacting you.

And then, the debt collector must “verify” the debt if you ask within the thirty days provided.

Just to make clear, it is YOU who have 30 days to dispute after getting the notice of your rights. The debt collector does not literally even have to do anything at all and also has no time limit. It’s just that, if you dispute and request verification, it cannot make further attempts to collect on the debt until it has verified it.

Exactly what verifying it is, is not exactly clear.

It would appear that contacting the original creditor and “establishing” that the debt is yours would be enough. That’s because the purpose of the requirement is not to require a separate lawsuit, but just to protect consumers from harassment based on typos or mistaken identities. The debt collector has to take some action to connect you to the debt if you dispute it under the FDCPA.

Even this low burden often seems to be too much, and possibly that is because the second owner of the debt (if there is one) has no relationship to the original creditor and simply cannot get the debt verified. Whatever the reason, asking for verification is often enough to make them go away. If they try to collect without having verified, that violates the FDCPA. And that in turn might allow you to stop a lawsuit brought against you.

Remember, however, that when the debt collector immediately files suit against you, this is not a “first contact” which triggers your right to notice and dispute. If you get served, you have to answer (or move to dismiss). It is not enough to request verification.

Disputing under the Fair Credit Reporting Act

There is another kind of validation, and it is completely different from the FDCPA, although you can use it to fight debt collectors, too. It is the validation provided for by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).

This is your right to “dispute” an item on your credit report.

You do this after looking at your credit report and seeing something that is not positive. Let’s say you see a debt collector reporting that you owe a debt. Remember your right to verification under the FDCPA comes when the debt collector first contacts you to try to collect the debt. You can dispute a line item on your credit report at any time.

There are rules, and there are better and worse ways to do it. But it does not depend on the other side being a debt collector or having tried to collect the debt. It simply requires that they have put some bad information on your credit report.

When you seek verification under the FDCPA, the debt collector has to verify the debt before making further attempts to collect. When you “dispute” the debt under the FCRA, it doesn’t affect collection. Instead, you are forcing the company to “investigate” the debt and show that what it is saying to the credit reporting agencies is true.

If the company reporting you cannot validate the debt, it is just required to withdraw the offending credit reference. But it could still try to collect the debt.

If it does keep trying to collect the debt after withdrawing a bad credit reference, that might be a type of admission that it can’t prove the debt if the case goes to a lawsuit.

But it probably isn’t controlling on the case because “validation” of a credit report is not

the same thing as proving that the debt is valid.

A Helpful Strategy

Here’s a strategy that might be helpful. If you receive a bill from a junk debt buyer – a company that bought your debt from the original creditor, in other words – you should

send a request for verification under the FDCPA right away. Then you should and get your credit report and look at it.

If the debt collector is reporting your debt on your credit report, you will want to dispute the credit report and seek validation under the FCRA. Separately.

Remember these are completely different rights. Your sending two different disputes may confuse the debt collector, but remember that under the FDCPA it must provide proof as to your identity and its right to bug you, while under the FCRA it must explain why the information it put on your credit report was correct. The debt collector may not verify under the FCRA, in which case you can clear your credit report.

If it DOES try to validate, it will probably give you information that it would object to having to provide if it were suing you for the debt – so it’s a shortcut to some discovery in that situation.

You should not try to do the FCRA verification first because it takes too much time.

To do the credit dispute right you have to get your credit report and dispute it with the credit bureau before you dispute it with the debt collector under the FCRA if you want to protect all your rights. You don’t have time to work your way through the FCRA before asserting your FDCPA rights.

On the other hand, if the company does not verify under the FDCPA, that would be worth mentioning as a basis for your credit dispute.

We should add that when you get the first letter from the debt collector you may not even know whether it is reporting you on your credit report. They often do not, so you won’t know whether or not you will have anything under the FCRA. But if they are contacting you, you have the right under the FDCPA. Since it only lasts for 30 days, you need not to delay in disputing.

We always recommend sending your disputes by certified mail (and keep all the proof). You don’t have to do this legally, but these things often come down to a question of what you can prove, and having proof from the postal service is a very good investment.

Your Rights under the Fair Credit Reporting Act

May 25, 2018

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Repairing Credit after Debt Litigation

May 25, 2018

You’re being sued as a result of things that are either happening now – or happened some time in the past. But things DO change. You will want to fix things eventually and move on to a better future. Here’s how you can get that started – starting while you’re still in litigation.

Life after Debt Litigation

You probably know that I am a big believer in the importance of filing a counterclaim. As I mention in the featured question section this month, having a counterclaim gives you some very important control over the lawsuit itself and whether you get sued or harassed again by the same, or a different debt collector. If you do not have a counterclaim, the debt collector is free to drop the case at will in most jurisdictions. Your counterclaim prevents this.

There is also another reason relating to your life after litigation: Repairing your credit after the lawsuit.

Holding the Collector in the Suit

Our Life after Litigation section here is related to the featured question: “How do you keep the debt collector from just dropping the case and selling your debt to someone else?”

If you’ve read my articles or watched some of my videos, you probably know that I am a big believer in filing a counterclaim. As I mention in the featured question section, having a counterclaim gives you some very important control over the lawsuit itself and whether you get sued or harassed again by the same, or a different debt collector.

Protect Your Credit Report

There is also another reason relating to your life after litigation. Let’s consider your credit report. You may not know it, but when a creditor or debt collector sells your debt to someone else, it should report that information on your credit report. That way, if the next company down the line reports you, it is clear that they are doing so on a debt that someone else previously owned. And this in turn prevents one “bad debt” from looking like several apparent bad debts. After reporting you initially and up to the point of charge off, the original creditor should not be adding information to your file. That is the right of the next person who obtains the debt. Another way of putting this is that only the person to whom the debt is currently owed has a right to report information about that debt.

Why is this important?

It’s important because if you force the debt collector to settle a debt as a dismissal “with prejudice,” you terminate the debt collector’s right to collect. You also end its right to report the debt as a debt. That is because it, and any subsequent owner of the debt, is bound by what is known as “res judicata” (or more commonly now called “collateral estoppel”). Basically what that means is that once a court has ruled on the validity of the debt – that ruling will apply no matter who later owns the debt.

What do you do with that?

Fair Credit Reporting Act

You may have heard of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, 15 U.S.C. Sec. 1681. This was a law initially designed to limit and reduce the abuses of the credit reporting agencies, which were running roughshod over consumer rights. In particular, the credit agencies would report false or disputed information which was damaging people in very real ways – and then ignore repeated requests to correct that information. The FCRA was an attempt to assert some kind of control over them. I will address this issue more fully some other time, but the law divides the reporting community into two groups: the agencies and “information suppliers.”

Debt Collectors Are Often Information Suppliers

The people who report debts to the credit reporting agencies are “information suppliers,” and while they have a legal duty to report that information truthfully, that duty is initially enforceable only by certain government agencies. In plain English – you can’t sue them for reporting information falsely. And, naturally, that is exactly what’s happening when you are falsely trashed in your report. But you do have a right.

Your Right against Information Suppliers

Your right against information suppliers is located in 15 U.S.C. Sec. 1681s-2(b). What this part of the law says is that:

1. In general

After receiving notice pursuant to section 1681i(a)(2) of this title of a dispute with regard to the completeness or accuracy of any information provided by a person to a consumer reporting agency, the person shall –

(A) conduct an investigation with respect to the disputed information;’

(B) review all relevant information provided by the consumer reporting agency pursuant to section 1681i(a)(2) of this title;

(D) If the investigation finds that the information is incomplete or inaccurate, report those results to all other consumer reporting agencies to which the person furnished the information and that compile and maintain files on consumers on a nationwide basis.

Your Rights under the FCRA

What this means in a practical sense is that if you win at trial and get the debt collector’s case dismissed, or if you force it to settle where its claims are dropped “with prejudice,” then you should consider following up with a request to the reporting agencies for your credit report. If the debt collector has reported you as owing, or if the original creditor has not reported the debt as sold, then you may want to file a dispute. It is the filing of the dispute that allows you to sue the information supplier for providing false information to the credit reporting agencies.

How it Works

Suppose you go through the litigation process and get the case dismissed with prejudice. Your next move might be to request a credit report from all the credit reporting agencies. Debt collectors do not necessarily provide information to all the agencies, and perhaps they provide different information to different agencies. In any event, get your report from each of them. Please check out this month’s scam report before you do this, however.

When you get the reports, you must read them carefully – do they reflect that the debt was sold? Has the debt collector filed reports saying that you still owe? If the answer to either or both of these questions is “yes,” then you can write to the credit reporting agency requesting that it reinvestigate and stating very specifically that you “dispute” the report and the debt. Don’t be coy about this – you get no points for style here – you need to dispute the report and insist on a correction.

This dispute is what triggers the responsibility of the credit reporting agency to conduct a reasonable “reinvestigation.” As part of this reinvestigation, the agency must ask the information supplier to investigate the information it is supplying. If the information supplier provides false information at this point, you can sue it under the Fair Credit Reporting Act as well as under “common law” (state law) theories like defamation. And this is where collateral estoppel comes back into play – because if they claim you owe the money even though they have dismissed the case with prejudice, they would be “estopped” from arguing that they were telling the truth if you sued them for defamation or false reports under the FCRA.

Sue the Credit Reporting Agencies?

I’ve never suggested that nonlawyers try to sue the credit reporting agencies. They’re hard to find and serve, hard to figure out and, at least at the last report I got, almost never give up. If you decide to go after the credit reporting agencies, you should strongly consider hiring a lawyer.