How This Guy Raised His “Very Poor” Credit Score Nearly 300 Points in 6 Months

James Cooper is all about changing kids’ lives. So he talks the talk, and he walks the walk.

Every year, Cooper gets invited to dozens of high schools to speak to thousands of students about bullying, violence, teen pregnancy and gangs through the nonprofit he founded called Fedup-4U.

He relates to the students; he doesn’t talk down to them. His school assemblies reach out to students with a passionate mix of music, dance and motivational speaking.

Now he’s adding another subject to the group’s repertoire: The importance of good credit.

Cooper feels strongly about this topic because of his own experience with having bad credit and climbing his way out of it — raising his score nearly 300 points, in fact. It was a long climb for him, and he got ripped off by three different so-called credit-repair companies along the way.

He’s lived it, and he wants to prevent today’s 18-year-olds from going through the same thing.

His message: Know how credit works, and don’t run away from your financial problems.

“Because when you try to buy a house 10 years later, that’s gonna kick you in the butt,” says Cooper, 50, of Atlanta.

‘We Got Burned’

Cooper knows all about having bad credit. As recently as 2017, his credit score was a lousy 524.

“I never had a credit card,” he says. “I had $6,000 worth of unpaid bills.”

He vowed to sort out his financial situation and fix his credit. He and a Fedup-4U partner did it together.

They learned the hard way not to deal with fly-by-night credit repair services.

Although there are legitimate credit repair services, there are also shady ones that demand money upfront and promise way more than they can deliver.

“We got burned by a lot of companies,” Cooper says. “They took our money and disappeared with it. We both got burned for about $4,500 altogether.”

Then they found Credit Sesame, a free credit monitoring service that helped them learn how to fix their credit for free.

‘They Showed Me the Ins and Outs’

In Credit Sesame, Cooper and his partner finally found a legitimate option for really improving their credit.

For one thing, you can use it 100% for free.

The app started by sending Cooper a free credit report card — including his TransUnion credit score — and provided him with personal recommendations.

It showed him a quick view of his total debt, plus all the factors contributing to his low score: credit usage, credit age, inquiries, account mix and payment history.

Cooper’s favorite part about Credit Sesame is its personalization. It suggested concrete steps, based on his situation, to better manage his credit score.

“They showed me the ins and outs — how to dot the I’s and cross the T’s,” Cooper says. “I applied for my first credit card ever.”

So long, 524 credit score.

Like Cooper, 60% of Credit Sesame members see an increase in their credit score; 50% see at least a 10-point increase, and 20% see at least a 50-point increase after 180 days.

Credit Sesame recommended he:

That raised his score.

“The highest I went was an 801,” he says. He raised his score by 277 points over the six months from June to November 2017.

“Then I purposely took my score back down,” he says, to see how quickly it could drop. He’s been watching his score go up and down ever since. “We’re experimenting with my credit score as I speak,” he says, to learn more about credit scores so they can teach students about them.

He lowered his credit score by raising his monthly balance on his credit cards. Again, that affected his credit utilization.

‘You’re Missing One of the Most Important Pieces’

Cooper founded Fedup-4U in New Jersey in 2009 and expanded it to Atlanta when he moved there in 2012. He does a lot of the group’s motivational speaking.

The organization says it hosts about 75 school assemblies and reaches more than 65,000 youths and young adults each year throughout the Southeast and the Northeast.

Now they’re putting together a school-approved curriculum on credit, to be launched in August 2018. The idea is to introduce it as part of the financial literacy programs that many high schools already teach.

“How can we talk about banking and checking without talking about credit?” Cooper asks. “I’m speaking to these kids, finding out what they know and what they don’t know.”

As he travels throughout the Southeast speaking in schools, Cooper has been floored by what he’s found.

“Too many of these kids are living on their own — 18 years old, seniors in high school, living in their own apartment and working a part-time job for tips,” he said. “But they don’t know anything about credit.

“I’m saying to them, ‘You’re already living in adulthood, but you’re missing one of the most important pieces.’”

Getting the Message out

Cooper and others at Fedup-4U are learning all they can about credit because the organization is preparing to take its new message into schools in Georgia, Alabama, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

“We want to touch the Z Generation,” Cooper says “We’re not in the business of fixing credit. We want to get to you before you have to fix your credit.”

The new program will be called CREDUP, short for “Career Ready Education Development on a student’s way UP.” Cooper says teaching kids about credit is especially important now that Americans owe a collective $1 trillion in credit card debt. Yikes!

Cooper values the lessons about credit he’s learning by monitoring his credit score.

“We’re taking so much of the blueprint from Credit Sesame,” he says.

If your credit isn’t as good as you’d like, check out Credit Sesame for yourself to see what you could do differently.

Credit Sesame does not guarantee any of these results, and some may even see a decrease in their credit score. Any score improvement is the result of many factors, including paying bills on time, keeping credit balances low, avoiding unnecessary inquiries, appropriate financial planning and developing better credit habits. 

Mike Brassfield ([email protected]) is a senior writer at The Penny Hoarder. His credit could be better, and he’s working on it.

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