balance sheet | Bigg Success

Tag Archive: balance sheet

The 5 Components of Your Credit Rating

Written on July 7, 2009 by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster in Money

credit_cards Bigg success is life on your own terms. Our focus today is on money, one of the five elements of bigg success.

Specifically, we want to talk about an asset that is particularly valuable now. Yet it doesn’t show up on your Balance Sheet. It’s your credit score.

___

Hear George & Mary-Lynn discuss today's topic on The Bigg Success Show! Click the purple player: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

___

Target credit

This was highlighted in a recent post over at Mashable about Google ads targeting people with high credit scores. People with good credit are positioned to take advantage of these times. Not just with consumer goods, but also with investment opportunities. There are some great deals out there on real estate and businesses.

In addition, people with good credit will get better rates on the money they borrow. So if you have a good credit score, protect it like any other asset.

FICO

FICO was developed by the Fair Isaac Corporation. They have a great piece that explains how your FICO score is determined [PDF]. We’ll summarize it here, but we highly recommend you read their article if you want to know all the details.

Your FICO score can range from 300 to 850. Obviously, higher scores are better. Anything over 720 is considered SuperPrime according to the Mashable post. These are the people Google is targeting in their new ad program.

We’ll look at the five components of your FICO score (along with the weight given to each one for the general population).

Your payment history (35%)

Pay your bills on time. It’s probably no surprise that this is the single biggest factor in determining your score. If you’re not current, work hard to get current and stay there.

The amounts you owe (30%)

We found it interesting that, even if you pay your credit card balance in full every month, you may still show a balance on your credit report. It shows the balance posted on your most recent statement.

One myth they debunk is that you should close accounts so you don’t have too many credit cards. If you’re in good standing with no balance on an account, it doesn’t affect your FICO score.

However, you are better off having fewer cards with a balance. It’s also better to have a small amount outstanding compared to your available credit line.

Be careful not to have too much credit available. It can actually hurt your FICO score. So don’t get, or keep, credit cards you know you’ll never use.

Length of credit history (15%)

Here they look at the age of your accounts in general as well as how long it’s been since you used your account. One tidbit we found interesting:

If you just established credit for the first time, you’ll hurt your FICO score if you open too many accounts too quickly.

New credit (10%)

Here they look at what’s going on now. What credit have you applied for recently? How are you doing on those payments?

This is good news for people coming out of a period of late payments. Just remember, though, it gets a relatively small weighting.

The types of credit you use (10%)

You want a mix of both revolving credit lines and installment debt. For example, a credit card along with a car loan would include both types of credit.

Your credit rating is an important asset. It affects your credit capacity. Your credit capacity may help you fund your next bigg opportunity!

___

Get the tips and tools you need to be a BIGG success. Subscribe to the Bigg Success Weekly – it’s FREE!

___

Thanks for sharing some of your time with us today. Please join us next time when we talk about a higher level of problem-solving. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes.

Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed.

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00431-070709.mp3

Related posts

Savers Spenders and Investors

Squirrels, Nuts and Business Cycles

(Image by Andres Rueda,CC 2.0)

7 Comments

The Second Way to Create Wealth

Written on June 15, 2009 by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster in Money

When we think talk about capital for a business, we usually think about money. One timeless wealth-building secret is to use other people’s money, commonly referred to as OPM.

The idea is to use a small amount of your own money, levered with a large amount of other people’s money.

___

Hear George & Mary-Lynn discuss today's topic on The Bigg Success Show! Click the purple player to listen while you read: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

___

The most obvious example is making a small down payment for your home and then borrowing the rest. Over time, you pay off the mortgage and you own the home outright. You’ve used OPM to add a significant asset to your Balance Sheet.

Of course, with our homes we have to work to pay off the mortgage. It works even better with a business or a piece of investment real estate.

All we have to invest is the small amount needed to get started. If all goes well, our customers or tenants pay off the loan for us. Now that’s a deal!

The second form of capital

We can also use human capital to create wealth. It’s kind of the Cinderella of the capital world – it doesn’t get as much focus as money as a form of capital.

But other people’s labor, or OPL, is also a way to build wealth. Of course, by “labor”, we mean time and talent. Instead of levering money, we lever time and talent.

OPL is more important going forward

OPM and OPL are the two ways people have traditionally created wealth. OPM has received more focus because we’ve relied heavily on investments in assets and infrastructure to create wealth.

But for small business owners today, the model for building wealth in the future is likely to rely more on OPL. Thanks largely to technology, we can start businesses with less money than it used to take.

Here are three guiding principles for using OPL to build wealth:

You must consider all peoples’ interests equally.

This is the principle of equal consideration of interests. It’s all for one and one for all. As the leader, you have to consider all people in your charge equally and then do what’s best for the collective whole.

So we think going forward, the people who create the most wealth will not be focused solely on their own self-interest. You have to think about what’s best for everyone who is part of your team.

Think win / win or wait.

If you’re going to work with someone, you both must win or you should wait. A win by one is a win by none in the long-term.

As bigg goal-getters, we’re always looking for ways to add value which creates opportunities to create wealth.

Your people must buy your vision.

If you have to sell your vision, the game is over before it’s even started. You want people to see how your idea benefits them. But it has to be bigger than that. It also has to serve society in a larger way – it needs to improve people’s lives. And your people must see it.

It’s a higher form of salesmanship – of leadership – that leads to bigg success today.

___

Get the tips and tools you need to be a BIGG success. Subscribe to the Bigg Success Weekly – it’s FREE!

___

Thank you so much for reading our post today.

Next time when we’ll talk about what a popular HBO show has to do with organizational structure in the years ahead. It’s related to this post so please check back in with us.

Until then, here’s to your bigg success.

Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes.

Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed.

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00416-061509.mp3

Related posts

How the Rich Make Money

Getting Aggressively Passive: Creating A Passive Income That Sets You Free

(Image in today's post by lusi)