NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Deck the Bills: Smart Spending and Credit Tips for the Holidays
Mon, 23 Dec 2024
Learn how to avoid holiday shopping pitfalls and quickly improve your credit, with ideas for restoring your credit. How can you avoid overspending during the holidays? How can you can help your credit score recover after missed payments? Can rental payments be reflected on your credit reports? Hosts Sean Pyles and Sara Rathner discuss optimizing your financial habits during the holiday season and overcoming credit mishaps that could show up on your credit report. They begin with a discussion of impulsive holiday shopping, providing tips for intentional spending, minimizing waste, and prioritizing experiential gifts over material items. Then, NerdWallet credit writer Amanda Barroso joins Sean and Sara to discuss actionable strategies to help your credit score recover, including writing goodwill letters, disputing errors with credit bureaus, and improving payment consistency. They also explain how renters can report on-time payments to credit bureaus with free and low-cost services, tools like Experian Boost, and the importance of credit freezes for families. Missed a payment? Try writing a goodwill letter to remove it from your credit report. Here’s NerdWallet’s article on how to do it, along with a sample goodwill letter: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/goodwill-letter How to dispute credit report errors: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/dispute-credit-report Real ways to improve your credit fast: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/raise-credit-score-fast NerdWallet’s guide to rent-reporting services: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/rent-reporting-services Here is a downloadable letter you can print and complete to send to TransUnion to request that they freeze your child’s credit: https://www.nerdwallet.com/assets/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TransUnion_credit-freeze_fill.pdf In their conversation, the Nerds discuss: how to improve credit scores, rent payment credit reporting, credit utilization, goodwill letter for credit report, holiday shopping tips, sustainable holiday spending, credit freeze for children, building credit with rent, free rent reporting services, how to dispute credit report errors, intentional spending habits, credit reporting tools, credit repair strategies, holiday budget tips, protecting your credit, identity theft prevention, actionable credit repair tips, credit myths busted, low-cost credit building tools, affordable rent reporting options, and the child credit freeze process. To send the Nerds your money questions, call or text the Nerd hotline at 901-730-6373 or email [email protected]. Like what you hear? Please leave us a review and tell a friend. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: How can you avoid overspending during the holidays?
Managing your credit score can feel a bit like playing a game where you weren't told the rules, and one small misstep can mean game over.
And recovering from a credit score mistake is a little more complicated than just putting a quarter into the slot and playing again. Sean, I know that you are deep in your video game era lately, now that you have all this newfound spare time. Do you have any credit cheat codes for us?
No cheat codes here, sadly. But this episode, we will help our listeners master the rules of the credit score game to get, shall we say, a new high score? Oh, Sean, your supply of credit related puns remains as robust as ever. Thank you. Welcome to NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast. I'm Sean Piles.
And I'm Sarah Rathner. This episode, we take on a number of your questions about credit in a lightning round. We'll talk about how to get rent payments counted toward your credit score, how to recover from a missed payment, and we'll clarify a bit of credit myth busting we did earlier this year.
But before we get into any of that, let's do a little holiday consumerism check-in. Sarah, how are you feeling about holiday shopping right now? Are you still getting that dopamine boost from clicking the buy button? Or does each new package on your doorstep leave you with a sense of dread?
Honestly, a new package arrives and I'm like, what now?
Or the latter.
Yeah, but I am enjoying the pair of AirPods that I got on sale because tangled headphone cords is the worst.
Yes. Welcome to the future, Sarah. AirPods are the best.
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Chapter 3: How can you recover your credit score after missed payments?
Chapter 4: Can rental payments improve your credit score?
And don't get me wrong, I really love the holidays and I love giving thoughtful gifts that my loved ones will cherish, but it's a fine line between buying a little holiday treat and actively participating in a capitalism-driven ecological disaster. I'm only being a little hyperbolic there. Anyway, back to the actionable part of this segment.
Let's talk about how to consume more intentionally and less wastefully this holiday season. Sarah, do you have any tips here?
If there's something specific I'm looking for, I try to find it secondhand before I go shopping for a new version of it. This is especially true for kids stuff. Oh my God, there's so much kids stuff and it's all plastic and it's all used for like two seconds before the kid just stops using it.
Whatever specific toy you wanted to buy your kid, somebody probably already bought it and now wants it out of their house because their kid outgrew it. Look on Facebook Marketplace. Look on Nextdoor. Ask your friends who have older children than you. There might be some stuff out there that is in excellent condition that would make great gifts for the kids in your lives.
Or if you're thinking about furniture, I'm a huge fan of antiquing. I love antiquing. I also live in a house that was built during World War I. So for the vibe that I have created in my home, it makes sense to have furniture that spans various decades. But also, you get better quality furniture for the money, significantly better. I'm talking real solid wood, well-constructed stuff.
You don't get that in furniture stores these days.
And what you're getting has so much more character, too.
Yeah, all the scratches on it tell a story. And, you know, honestly, the stuff that they sell now in furniture stores is the same engineered wood you'd get in Ikea, but they have the nerve to charge like $1,800 for a dining table now. What about you, Sean?
Well, I have a couple. One is called the three-year test. Before I buy anything, either for myself or for a loved one, I try to ask myself, where will this be in three years? And this can apply to anything, which is why it's so good. Take a bottle of wine, for example. In three years, that will likely be long since consumed and the bottle will likely be repurposed or recycled.
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