SECRETS OF THE 800+ CLUB

A comprehensive guide to understanding your personal credit score and improving it.

This latest from professional financial advisor Dinkins, the author of One Bucket at a Time (2015), concentrates on the core element of personal finance: the individual credit score. Right from the start of this book, the author stresses its overwhelming importance: The score “not only determine[s] the type of mail that comes to our boxes, but it also determines the price we pay for our homes and cars, and even whether we receive a loan if we want to start a business,” she writes. She points out that some people are so desperate to clean up their score that they’re willing to pay exorbitant fees at credit-renovation seminars to do so, but she assures her readers that this isn’t strictly necessary (“Credit repair companies do not have a magic bullet”); instead, she shows, in this book, how people can do a lot to help fix their credit scores themselves. Dinkins writes about all of this with simple, encouraging clarity and inviting notes of humor (at one point noting “I think I’ve stressed this point ad nauseam, don’t you think?”). A great amount of valuable information is compressed into fewer than 130fast-moving pages. In that small space, the author explains to readers what credit is, how it works, why it’s important, and how to establish it at the beginning of one’s financial life; she also informatively reveals the natures of scams that guarantee quick credit renovation. In addition, she earnestly tells readers that there’s little room for compromise when a credit score decreases: “If you have an 800+ credit score, your score can drop fifty points and you will still receive great rates on credit,” she writes. “If you have a 750 credit score and your score drops 50 points, you are no longer considered an excellent borrower.”

An intelligently organized and optimistic guide to repairing one’s credit.