Build Your Credit Like A Boss With Rochelle Ceballos
Have you ever wanted to start your own business to help bring in multiple streams of income? Or how about wanting to buy a home or a new car? If you have but haven’t gotten around to it, chances are one of the reasons is not having great credit. On today’s podcast, Stefanie Peters brings on her go-to girl - a secret weapon that can really help you to expedite your goals and dreams by getting your credit back on track – Rochelle Ceballos. Rochelle is not known as the Credit Repair Queen for nothing, so sit back and discover how you can build your credit like a boss.
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Listen to the podcast here:
Build Your Credit Like A Boss With Rochelle Ceballos
I am excited to introduce you to my powerhouse friend and lady boss who I have deemed “The Credit Repair Queen.” Rochelle is passionate about helping others win. That's what I love about her, her heartbeat. She's turned her mess into her message and is now helping hundreds of people restore their credit and gain financial literacy. As I've been talking a lot about the real estate arena and helping you to bring in those multiple streams of income, sometimes what holds people back is not having great credit. Do you want to buy a home? Good luck. Do you want to buy a car? Good luck. Even if you want to rent, good luck if you don't have good credit. I wanted to bring on my go-to girl, a secret weapon that can help you to expedite your goals and dreams by getting your credit back on track. Rochelle, I'm excited to hear your backstory. Thanks for joining.
Thank you for having me. You are amazing. Since the first time we talked, I was like, “This is my girl.” I thank God for connecting us right away. I appreciate you for having me as a guest on here and I'm excited to share.
Let's dial into your backstory of what got you passionate about helping people with credit because I know that you had said, “I had a messy backstory.” Let's chat about it.
A few years ago, I was struggling financially. I was making good money, but I didn't know how to manage money. No one had ever taught me that. I had spent thousands of dollars on business coaching, how to build your business with social media, all those types of things, but no one ever taught me how to manage money. No one ever taught me the importance of a credit score. I was struggling to the point where I remember getting on my knees in my room, crying out to God and asking him, “Why is this happening to me? Why can't I get over the hump? I'm serving your people. I'm helping many. I'm an inspiration, but my finances are terrible.”
The moment I admitted my struggle, that's when doors started to open up. God guided me and helped me learn about credit and managing my money. I decided to turn my mess into a message and that's what God had shared with me. He was like, “Rochelle, now that you've overcome this, it's time to help our people.” I was like, “No,” because now I have to share with people that I struggled and it was an ego thing. It's a shameful thing when you start talking about money and not being able to manage it properly. That's where I came from. Now, I'm here helping many people. My favorite part is when women tell me, “Rochelle, the reason why he came to you is because I feel like this is a judgment-free zone.” That's why I'm here.
Building Your Credit: Make sure you're making your payments on time. One late payment can hurt your score between 50 and 100 points. You can go from good credit to poor credit real quick.
Let's even dig in a little bit deeper into your backstory. What got you to the point where you always not in a spot where you were able to manage your money effectively? Was there something that happened to you? How did you wake up and be like, “I don't want to be here?”
I had gotten into a bad relationship. Many people tell me that too. When they reach out to me, they're like, “I had a divorce.” I got out of a bad relationship and he left some debts with me that I wasn't able to continue to pay. I didn't know that late payments hurt me as bad as they did. I thought it was like a $35 late payment. I had no idea it was damaging my credit score. After that relationship, I struggled to stand on my own two feet. Not just that, I struggled with asking for help. I have a supportive family, but it was pride. I didn't want people to know that I was struggling and because of that, I kept getting deeper and deeper into a hole. It started with a bad relationship. That healing process, along with me being open to being more vulnerable and asking for help. God was dealing with me in that time of my life.
That strikes a chord. I didn't fall into a bad financial spot because of the guy that I was partnered with. Having a bad relationship in your life can mess with you on many levels, not only from a financial standpoint but from a physical standpoint, spiritual, emotional, all of those things. To be able to get to the point of saying, “I surrender all of this. I've got an issue that I need to iron out. I know I need help.” I had to have that come to Jesus moment even with myself of saying, “You're a little screwed up here. You need some help. You need to reach out to someone.” That's where it’s like, “Our ego is not our amigo. It’s our biggest overhead.” When we can get ourselves out of our way and say, “There are people out there that can help me every single step of the way.” I love what you would even have shared with me when we first connected of saying, “If you don't know the rules to the game, you don't know how to play.” Tell me how you say it.
“If you don't know the rules of the game, it's hard to win.” If you think about it from a sports standpoint, you can have all of the talents in the world. You could be in the best shape and everything, but if you don't know the rules of volleyball, you're going to lose. You look good and everyone is like, “That person's a beast.” When you go to play and don't know the rules, you end up messing up. You end up losing. That's what happened to me. I'm going through this financial difficulty and I'm like, “I'll make this a late payment and then I'll pay it later to catch up,” having no idea that my credit score was getting damaged so bad. I didn't even know that maxing out credit cards damage your score. I was over maxing the amount. If it was a $3,000 limit, I was $3,500. That is a big no-no. I didn't know those things. That's what I do. I'm here to educate people so that they do know because they didn't teach us this stuff in school.
Give people that are on the other side reading or maybe they have checked their credit or went onto their bank statement and then they clicked on their FICO score. They're like, “What happened?” What would you say would be tactical things to start to fix it?
The one thing is 35% of your credit score, this is the largest piece, is payment history. Make sure you're making your payments on time. One late payment can hurt your score between 50 and 100 points. You can go from good credit to poor credit quickly. Here's what I advise to anyone who is like, “Rochelle, that sounds great, but I cannot make the payment this month.” Pick up your phone, call the lender and let them know. Normally, they will work with you, but you have to call. That is key. That's the largest piece of your credit score. The second-largest is your credit utilization. Have you ever maxed out a credit card?
I had multiple times. I've gone over the maximum. It’s hurting my credit score. Get your balances below 30%. If you're thinking about real estate and investing in real estate, even better. Get it lower than 9%. That's going to help out your credit score. How do you do that? It's having a budget. That was one of the reasons why I never had money at the end of the month is because I did not know what was going in and out of my account. I was financing Starbucks.
I look back and like, “What was I thinking?” I didn't realize because out of sight, out of mind. Using credit cards, sometimes you don't realize the money you're spending. It's important to look over your statements. I look over my statements once a month to see what's going through. Another tip for credit utilization is subscriptions. ShoeDazzle was one of mine, $39.99 for a new pair of shoes every month. I canceled that and a few other subscriptions, and it helped me save money. I remember once I went through and I saved like $250 a month on subscriptions.
It adds up. It is amazing how these little things, I call it the latte factor. Everyone should enjoy a cup of coffee here or there. I doing my concoction at home personally, but I do like my Starbucks every once in a while too. It is amazing. You start adding all these different things, “It's just $30 at TJ Maxx. It's just $100 at HomeGoods.” We start justifying and it's amazing how at the end of the month, you look at that credit card statement and there can sometimes be a big surprise because it's easy to whip out that credit card and put it on the card.
It's for people with all different types of incomes as well. You could be making a six-figure income and blowing your money like if you're making a lower income. You can be making seven-figures and blow all of your money. It's important for every income range. Even me, it's not like I wasn't bringing in money. I was spending it quicker than I was bringing it in. That's keeping up with the Joneses as well. I've been there. Now, I don't care what other people think of me.
That was the route. Another piece to the credit score and this is something that I didn't know and I made a huge mistake of is 15% of your credit score is your length of credit. I opened up my first credit card when I was 18 or 19 years old. That was helping my credit but because I had gotten in a bad situation, I'm maxing out my credit cards. When I finally paid off my debt, I closed one of my oldest accounts and it hurt my credit score because it lowered my length of credit. I always advise people to keep that card open, use it sparingly but don't close it because that can hurt you.
Building Your Credit: Life is harder if you don't have credit.
Even with the Airbnb that I opened up. I opened up a number of different credit cards because with TJ Maxx, there are many fun like HomeGoods. I opened that one. I also opened up a Home Depot, but I don't utilize those anymore. You'd say leave them open even if there's nothing on them?
Those are newer for you. If you close them there, it's not going to affect you too much. It’s the older ones that you want to keep open because they give you that length. If you do open a new one, it might impact your score because now the average is less.
You're saying credit history and keeping your balances low is important, looking at your bottom line, how much you're charging on these different cards month after month, try to minimize those subscriptions as much as possible. Anything else to help to spike that score back up if you found yourself in a spot where you don't want to be?
Having a good credit mix as well. That's 10% of your credit score. Having installment loans and revolving credit. An installment loan is like a mortgage or a car note. Revolving credit is to have credit cards. Oftentimes, I talk to people and they're against credit cards. It's going to help you. Many people can't even rent an apartment because of their credit. Life is harder if you don't have credit, even if you don't agree with everything, when it comes to credit and the credit bureaus, it's important that we begin to build and that's going to help you.
That's a solid tip to follow the rules by.
If you don't know and you're like, “I don't do credit cards.” I've talked to people and I'm like, “Be responsible with them. You don't have to have a super high limit either if you don't want one. This is going to help you build because if you do want to get a home, they need to have some history.”
Even my parents advocated when I was eighteen years old, starting my first business to get a couple of different credit cards to build that credit. When I went to go buy my first car, they said, “We do want to finance it.” I'm like, “No. I want to pay cash.” They said, “You could get a better price point on the car if you finance it.” I financed it for a month. I don't like financing in general. I paid cash the next month. That was just me. I'm quirky like that. For a lot of other people, if they want to get themselves in that spot to have more options, it is important to build that early on in the game. I love that you advocate for that.
With the financing, you don't want to finance something at 20% or 30%. It's better to pay cash if you're going to finance at that high of a percentage for a car. It's like let me restore my credit so I can get those lower interest rates. If not, you're throwing away money.
I also like when I connected with you on Instagram a lot of the education that you even put on Instagram, but you've also partnered up with a company that helps become that go-to of knowing the ins and outs of how to fix the credit, how to become more financially secure, all these how-tos. The other thing that you had mentioned to me, I know that I've been wanting to put a will together because I don't have a will. I'm still young, but you never know what tomorrow's going to bring. One of my best friends in 2019, went to go take a nap and he's not with us anymore. I don't think he had much in place, just a dear friend, financially in a phenomenal spot, but yet I don't think he thought about that. He was 42 years young. If you want to share a little bit more about this vehicle of what people can learn, it's more or less a university.
That's what we do. It's financial literacy. Our flagship program is credit restoration. People need help with their credit. Forty-three million people have a score of 599 or less, but we're going to give you all the tools you need to win. We find that most people who are struggling with their credit score, they're struggling in other areas too. We provide a budgeting tool so you can start to budget. We provide a debt payoff tool so you can begin to pay off debt. That's going to help your score as well in that credit utilization.
We provide a will and trust so that you can have a legacy. Legacy is important. Writing a will doesn't have to be a time-consuming process. We think it is. We provide that included with our protection plan along with many other tools. We give people twelve tools. Credit monitoring, so you can see what's happening behind the scenes. Identity monitoring. Here's the crazy thing, as your credit score rises, the higher your chances of getting identity theft, because if people want to steal an identity, wouldn't you want to still identity with higher credit?
It's nice to know that you're armed with the tools and the resources to win because at the end of the day, we don't know what we don't know. I love that you've partnered with an awesome company that can give people hope again. I know you personally can put your arm around someone and say, “Let's help you every single step of the way. You don't have to be in this alone.” It can be a little shameful. Maybe you're doing a little bit of shopping therapy over Coronavirus, and you've found yourself in not a good spot, or you got a divorce and things are not in a good spot. Life happens.
We need to ask ourselves, “How do I get out of this?” It's okay if you don't know, but there's someone that's there to help you and help you every single step of the way. Rochelle is that person that can help you step by step. Link arms and say, “Let's get you out of this financial position, let's help you to win, and let's win together and we can go farther, faster together.” Thank you, Rochelle, for your backstory of where you've come from, where you're going and the people that you're helping along the way. I love that you're faith-based and you are shining such a beautiful light on many people. I have a couple of last questions for you to finish this up. If you met someone that said, “I want to become the boss of my own life and call the shots. What's my first step?”
Just do it. Often, we feel it inside. God is nudging you and he wants you to take that first step. You don't need to know it all. You need to take action and action brings clarity.
Building Your Credit: The higher your credit score, the higher your chances of getting identity theft.
Action cures all fear. We can get that paralysis of analysis, but when we take that first, next best step, it's amazing how God illuminates the way to the next one. What is your definition of a boss?
A boss is someone who has freedom, who is confident in who they are, and who is sharing the message God has given them with the world.
Any last words of wisdom?
It's a blessing to be a blessing. Go out and bless someone now with your service, your product, or the message God has given you. You feel so good inside. That person is going to be so grateful that you did that.
Rochelle, share all your handles, share where people can connect with you. Side note, if you take advantage of her helping you with the credit services, mention my name because we have a fun little gift we want to give you when that happens because I am passionate about this. We want to help you every single step of the way.
You can find me on Instagram. Instagram is my favorite place in the world to be @RochelleCeballos. You can also find me on Facebook, Facebook.com/RochelleCeballos. On TikTok, @RochelleCeballos. I am on all of the handles. On Twitter, it is Twitter.com/UrFavRochelle.
Thank you. For all of you readers out there, my challenge as always is for you to fire your fear, build your faith to become the boss of your own life. Let's get after it and let's make an impact. Have an amazing day.
Important Links:
@RochelleCeballos - Instagram
About Rochelle Ceballos
Rochelle Ceballos is passionate about helping others WIN. She has turned her mess into a message & is now helping hundreds of people restore their credit and gain financial literacy.