As for your Cooper comment, it’s how you arrive. Not how quickly. Edited: Too risque.

BTW, my S2000 eats Coopers for breakfast. And I’ll prove it once I recover from the neck surgery I just had followng a recent racing accident

Anyway, here’s a link to a column I did for people in need of credit help. As an LO I did plenty of credit counseling, as a busy LO I had less time but could send clients to reputable places. This article tells them what to look for in a credit repair agency.

http://www.mortgagecreditproblems.com/articles/debt-consolidation/counselor-or-salesperson-beware-of-debt-consolidation-service-frauds.htm

Simply pay all your bills as promised on time. Then, don’t feel compelled to use all your credit. It’s to the creditor’s advantage to have you paying forever and ever.

Use credit sparingly, when needed, if at all. Know the difference between wants and needs. If you don’t have money for milk for the kids’ breakfast, go ahead and use the credit card until you get paid.

But that new iPod doesn’t count as a need. No matter how bad little Johnny wants one for Christmas. Get a part time job. Then you can use that check for the iPod.

Mentors make our lives easier. I didn’t mention Randy Lindemuth. He was my first broker in Tulsa, OK. A true thinker in this business. He REQUIRED that I know how to explain, line by line, a Settlement Statement.

He believed in full service wages and with that came full service service. I still talk to him about monthly. Although he doesn’t concentate on investments, he’s been in business since 1986. About as smart as they come.

We do owe much to our mentors. My mortgage mentor was Bill Jones or Mr. Jones as we all called him. He’s now retired and everyone who had the good fortune to work with him loved him and learned alot.

Mr. Jones was a mortgage banker in the true sense of the word back in the 50s. He worked for Pittsburgh Mortgage. In 1978, at the ripe age of 22, I started in the mortgage business as a mortgage originator under his watchful eye.

We only wrote FHA and VA and so that meant we worked with some buyers who had marginal credit. In those cases, we had an explanation letter submitted by the borrower and if Mr. Jones still wasn’t sure, he’d give them one last chance. They could come in and discuss it with him in person. He would judge their attitude and provide advise and maybe approve their mortgage. We worked the entire metro Pittsburgh market and so if a customer was serious enough to take time off work and drive to the office and talk with Mr. Jones, he almost always gave them a chance.

There was one exception to his rule. He just couldn’t get around it because he was such a strict Catholic. LIS, that’s right, Living In Sin. Man, if you were LIS, you needed good credit.

I lived in terror because nobody in the office knew that my future husband and I were…….LIS.

So, Mr. Jones taught me much. He was a great and wonderful boss and without knowing it, he switched the timing of our wedding from eventually to pretty darn quick.