By Lisa L. Gill | June 10, 2021 | Consumer Reports<\/a> | Credit Score |<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nine years ago, Brittnay Williams\u2019 credit score<\/a> was 569\u2014putting her in the \u201cvery poor\u201d category and undermining her dream of buying a home<\/a>. But over the course of two years and with the help of her credit union, Williams, of West Memphis, Ark., raised her score by 100 points and qualified for a mortgage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When she began her journey, Williams, 32, was among the estimated 14 percent of active credit consumers with credit scores so low it is hard to qualify for a mortgage, according to Experian, one of the big three credit bureaus. About 26 million adults lack any credit history and have no score at all, according to the most recent figures<\/a> from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a government agency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMillions of Americans are locked out of the American dream of homeownership, higher education, starting a business, or making major purchases,\u201d says Syed Ejaz, a financial policy analyst at Consumer Reports. \u201cFor most lenders, everything begins and ends with that score.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Click here for the rest of the story…<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How your credit score is determined is often hidden and doesn\u2019t treat all consumers equally. Here\u2019s what to watch for, and what to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14986,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2],"tags":[1762,726,1764,77,1763,71,62],"class_list":["post-11212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insurance","category-shield-blog","tag-buying-a-home","tag-credit-score","tag-how-to-build-credit-fast","tag-insurance","tag-low-credit","tag-michigan","tag-shield-insurance-agency"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shieldagency.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shieldagency.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shieldagency.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shieldagency.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shieldagency.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11212"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.shieldagency.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14987,"href":"https:\/\/www.shieldagency.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11212\/revisions\/14987"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shieldagency.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shieldagency.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shieldagency.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shieldagency.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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