Page 59 - Winning The Credit Game Bundle (CK Patrick)

NEW CREDIT 47

My credit score was devastated, all because I decided to be a
responsible comparative buyer when seeking a single modest car loan.
It wasn’t fair. I didn’t ask those dealers to behave that way on my
behalf, and they weren’t exactly looking out for my best interest by
warning me that this would happen. They were only interested in
getting the best possible loans for themselves on my behalf. I might have
decided not to apply with them at all if I knew it would hurt my credit
score. Too bad they weren’t going to go out of their way to warn me
about that either.
This was one of the hard lessons that compelled me to become a
credit expert and educator. Studying what had happened in the after-
math, I learned that there was a way I could have gotten all the same
comparative buying benefits while putting only one hard inquiry on
my account. Here’s how to do it!

SECURING FINANCING IN ADVANCE

What I didn’t know when I applied for financing to all those car deal-
erships was that I could have come to them with financing already in
hand. Then they would not have each sent out multiple inquiries on
my behalf, and I would have gotten to compare their offers at no cost
to myself.
How could I have done this? I could have gotten approved for a car
loan through my bank or any other auto loan company or lender
before I ever went to the dealerships.
If you have a bank account, you already have a relationship with a
financial institution that may be willing to offer financing on items like
car and business loans. Like all creditors, they will take your credit
history into account: the better your score already is when you apply,
the more favorable the terms you will get. But since they’re the ones
who get to hang onto your money in the bank, they may have more
incentive to lend to you than a random lender would.
In fact, that in itself is a fact that few people know about banks.
Banks are allowed to use the money you have sitting in your account
to make investments of their own as long as they pay you back with