What we do · Coaching
Rebuilding coaching
Disputes only ever address what is wrong. What is right — the accurate late payments, the real collection, the bankruptcy — is dealt with by time and by building something better alongside it. This is the slow half, and it is the half that does most of the work.
- What it costs
- $85 per session
- When you are invoiced
- Invoiced after each session. No package, no minimum, no notice period.
- How long
- Monthly, for as long as it is useful
What actually moves a score
FICO weights five things, and the first two are most of it: payment history at around 35 per cent, and amounts owed — mostly utilisation — at around 30. Length of credit history is about 15, credit mix about 10, and new credit about 10. VantageScore weights things differently but reaches broadly similar conclusions.
Which means the entire practical programme is: never miss a payment again, get your utilisation down, and let the old accounts get older. Everything else is a rounding error dressed up as a strategy.
- Utilisation under about 30 per cent of each card’s limit, and under 10 if you can manage it. It is measured on the statement balance, not on what you carry, so paying before the statement cuts can move it without costing anything.
- Every payment on time, including the small ones. A single 30-day late is worth more damage than most people expect, and it stays seven years.
- A secured card, if you have no open revolving account. You put down a deposit that becomes your limit, use it for one small recurring bill, and pay it in full.
- A credit-builder loan through a credit union, where the money is held in an account and released at the end. It builds payment history without giving you access to debt.
- Leave old accounts open unless they carry a fee. Closing one shortens your history and cuts your available credit, which pushes utilisation up.
And the budget underneath it
None of the above survives a month where the car needs tyres. So a good part of these sessions is not about credit at all: it is about what comes in, what has to go out, and where the gap is. A plan you abandon in six weeks has done nothing for your file and quite a lot to your morale.
If the numbers genuinely do not work, we will say so, and the conversation turns to a non-profit credit counselling agency or to whether a bankruptcy would give you a floor to stand on. Both are better outcomes than paying us to watch the situation get worse.
We do not recommend authorised-user "tradeline rental", where you pay to be added to a stranger’s old credit card. Lenders discount it, it can be treated as misrepresentation on an application, and the market for it sits next door to the market for CPNs.
What progress actually looks like
Six months in, most people have a card reporting a low balance, no new late payments, and one or two corrected entries. The score has usually moved, sometimes a little and sometimes a lot, and we will not have predicted which because nobody can.
The change people describe is rarely about the number. It is that the post stops being frightening, and that a car loan application becomes something you can approach rather than something you avoid.
Nobody here is going to tell you off.
The first conversation is free, it takes about half an hour, and it ends with you knowing what is actually on your file and what can honestly be done about it. If the answer is "nothing we can charge for", we will tell you that, and you will still get the plan.
Not ready to talk to anyone? Take the guide and do it yourself. It is the same method, it costs nothing, and you never have to tell us you used it.