Experian Boost Explained (Instantly Raise Your Credit Score for Free) - YouTube

today i'm going to talk about Experian Boost  because it's a very easy way that you can increase  

your credit score instantly and it's free so for  most of us out there it's at least worth looking  

into now it has been out for over a year so it's  not like it's something new to everyone but they  

did offer a new feature that i've been noticing in  some of their recent advertisements and that's the  

main reason that i wanted to create this video  today so that we're up to date on everything  

experian boost so one of the first questions  you're probably asking is what is experian boost  

now the easiest way that i can describe this is  that experian is one of the three major credit  

bureaus out there and they determine pretty much  what your credit score is so experian developed a  

new way of finding more data for you and they  call it experian boost now normally we have a  

lot of monthly bills that come out but a lot of  those monthly bills that are recurring aren't  

actually reported to the credit bureaus so what  experian boost is able to do is able to go into  

your utilities your cable your internet a bunch of  different things that you pay every single month  

and they're able to actually put those inside of  your credit report and make it even better for you  

and so that is what experian boost is and then  something else that i've personally noticed  

from all the advertisements that i've seen  recently is that they now include streaming  

services particularly netflix hulu disney plus  and hbo so if you actually have any of those  

running every single month then those can actually  help your credit score just by using the experian  

boost so basically if you've got different utility  bills and telecom bills that are in your name  

that you have to pay for every single month  then those can actually help boost your score  

each and every one of them so for instance water  gas electric phone internet cable all those types  

of things can help boost your score now it's not  guaranteed that the xperia boost will find and  

count every single one of those but they might  and now because they've introduced netflix hulu  

hbo and disney plus you can also get credit for  actually having those streaming services that  

you would have paid for regardless now honestly  if you don't have netflix or something like that  

i wouldn't go out of my way just to sign up in  hopes that you're going to boost your credit score  

because what experience says is that on average  you're going to boost your score by 13 points so  

nothing's really guaranteed here you could go up  one point you could go up to as high as i've seen  

as 44 points so just keep that in mind the boost  isn't going to be that high and generally speaking  

it's made for people with a thin credit score  meaning they don't have a lot of credit history  

or credit so in those cases if you're newer to  the credit world the boost can definitely help you  

but if you're extremely established and you have  like an 800 credit score it's probably not going  

to do much for you okay so the next question  i want to answer is how does experian boost  

work and this is also very simple because you  don't have to go through a third party to activate  

it or anything like that you just have to go to  experian's main website which is experian.com  

and then find their boost feature and once you  find that you just sign up for it it's free  

put in your credentials and then you also have  to add your bank account that is associated with  

those monthly payments so as long as those monthly  payments are coming out of a certain checking  

account or multiple checking accounts you'll need  to add those and then you're going to have them  

run their boost it happens very quickly it's  also encrypted and safe so they're not reading  

your bank account information they're just reading  the information that they need to see and as soon  

as they do that you can instantly increase your  credit score by adding the boost now keep in mind  

that experian boost is only looking for positive  payment history and i don't know how long they're  

looking for but it's probably between about three  and six months so if you've had a netflix bill  

for five months in a row then it'll probably  count as a positive towards your credit boost  

now if you have anything negative on there like  for instance if you missed or had a late payment  

on your utilities that is not going to be affected  because of the experian boost so don't worry about  

that the experian boost is only going to help you  it's not going to hurt you and if you really are  

concerned you can actually turn on and off the  different types of bills that they find so for  

instance if you don't want netflix for some reason  on your experian boost then you can actually turn  

that off and you'll always have access to be able  to turn them on and off depending on what you want  

to do so when it comes to a negative impact  on your credit score you don't need to worry  

about experian boost doing that because once again  they're only looking for positive payment history  

so they can at least try to get your credit  score a little bit higher and i do want to  

make a note here that if you happen to make a lot  of those specific payments on your credit card  

then those are not going to help towards the  boost because the boost is only attributed to the  

checking account that's linked and so if that bill  isn't inside the checking account then they're  

never going to see it and you're never going to  get credit so if you really want to get credit and  

you're paying netflix on your credit card then  switch that over to your checking account and  

basically within three to six months it will add  on to the experian boost and hopefully boost your  

score i also want to mention that the experian  boost is only added to the fico 8 credit score  

model so what this basically means is that when  you go out and you get a loan 90 of the lenders  

out there do use the fico 8 model so that's a good  thing but there are lenders that don't use that  

information so just keep in mind that just because  you have a higher credit score from your boost  

doesn't mean that the lender is even going to read  or care about any of that information and then  

just remember that the boost is only coming from  experience so if you were looking for a mortgage  

and the lender wanted to look at your credit  score from all three different credit bureaus  

then obviously the other two bureaus wouldn't  have the boost information because that's only  

coming from experian specifically so overall if  you want to increase your credit score and you do  

have those certain types of monthly bills that  are coming out every month then definitely try  

experian boost because like i said their program  is free for the boost and it also includes quite  

a few other features that can help you with your  credit monitoring and those are also free as well  

now they do have a paid program that's 25 bucks a  month that offers quite a few other features you  

can sign up for that if you want to but as for  the boost that we've been talking about that is  

for sure free now if you just found this channel  i'm jason with honest finance and i make a lot  

of videos on different topics that'll give your  life and your finances more value so feel free to  

subscribe if you're into this type of content but  thank you for watching this video have a great day