Mathematically, the difference between 620 and 760 is only 140, but in real life it can mean a difference of thousands of dollars per year to you.

140 doesn't sound like much. If you were shopping for a new TV, and you liked two of them, priced $140 apart, you might not worry too much about the price difference.

However, in the world of your credit score, the difference between those two is huge.

A 620 credit score means you can get a home loan, from a very few lenders, with bad terms, at a rate of around 7.5%, if you're lucky.

A 760 credit score means you can get a home loan from anywhere, with very good terms, at a rate closer to 5.5%.

A 2% difference. Again a small number. But let's look at the effect in real dollars.

The monthly difference in payment can easily be $200 - $400. Over one year this is $2400 - $4800. Look at this table, using a sample mortgage:

For a $216,000 30-year, fixed rate mortgage:

If your score is: your interest rate is: ...and your monthly payment is:

760 - 850 5.8% $1,267

700 - 759 6.02% $1,298

680 - 699 6.2% $1,322

660 - 679 6.41% $1,352

640 - 659 6.84% $1,414

620 - 639 7.39% $1,493

The picture gets even uglier

As the scores drop, the payments continue to go higher, if you can find a lender willing to work with you. Fewer lenders are willing to take you on, and your choices are not pretty.

Those who are willing to work with a credit score of 620 are more likely to charge more even to process the loan. There are closing costs with any lender, but if you end in the wrong situation, you can be charged thousands more in just closing costs. That's money you'll never get back.

Credit counseling can hurt you further

There are a number of companies out there that operate doing "Consumer Credit Counseling". These companies offer a program of reducing or eliminating interest on credit cards and other forms of debt. You then work out a monthly payment which, over a period of several years, pays off the unpaid balances.

What they don't generally tell you at the start is this will royally screw up your credit. Try getting a house while you're in the middle of the payoff. It won't happen.

There are other companies that can help you consolidate your debt, and will not harm your credit scores. But you have to know which is which. The ones who have been advertising heavily on TV over the last few years are mainly not the ones that help.

It just keeps getting worse

There are companies that offer 'help' in the form of 'bad credit history' credit cards. These are for people with bad credit to help rebuild their credit history, and usually require that you put money on deposit with them, which you then 'borrow' against. They're called secured credit cards.

Did you know that these 'secured' credit cards actually further damage your credit? They do! Not only does the presence of one of these on your credit report effect your score, but also sends up red flags to any potential lender.

They see one of these credit cards on your credit report and it tells them you've been TROUBLE to other lenders in the past. So stay away from these credit cards.

How is all this fair?

It isn't. The reason most people end up with a low credit score is not because they were unwilling to make their payments. It's because at the time the bill was due, they simply did not have the money.

While there are some plain old deadbeats out there, the majority of people try to pay their bills on time, when they can.

But if you don't have a huge income, life's occassional hiccups can make paying a bill on time impossible. This ends up as a bad mark on your credit score. The lower the income, the more often this is likely to happen.

So the people with the lowest credit scores tend to be those who don't make a huge income in the first place. This makes the above numbers that much more upsetting, since the people who probably have the least money are forced to make the highest payments.

There is a way out

If you're reading this page it's because you have realized that you need to change your credit scores. Maybe you want to buy a house or a car, and have hit into the wall that many borrowers run into. Your credit scores are not good enough to get a reasonable loan for what you want, and now you're looking for answers.

The good news is that no matter how bad your credit report has gotten, if you're willing to do some work, you can change it. And it doesn't have to take forever. So cheer up, there is some hope.

Now you can raise your score FAST

The good news is that there is help. If you have done any searching around, you'll see that there is a great deal of information out there on how to go about getting your scores up. Much of it is true, some of it is false, and it can be hard to know what to beleive.

So we're going to give it to you straight from a man on the inside. Dave Peters is a loan officer. He started doing mortgages in the 1990s, and has become an expert in the way your credit score can be tweaked.

Your insider has become a national expert on the subject of credit, speaking at meetings and on the radio around the country.

Since his livelihood depends on getting people like you approved, he has worked hard to uncover the fastest ways to raise your credit score.

How you can beat them at THEIR GAME

Fifteen years ago the game was different. At that time it was common for a lender to sit down with you and go over your credit report. They would ask questions and give you a chance to explain what was happening, and why you were late with this or that. It allowed for human interaction.

Today it's a different game. There is so much activity going on that there is no chance of them sitting down with you. It's all done automatically. One computer asks another what your credit score is, does a few calculations, and you get an answer.

So the bad news is it's mainly done by computer. But, really, this is also the good news. Because this gives you an opportunity to use their system to your advantage.

How to turn the system to your advantage

First you have to know the rules. In his book HOW CREDIT REALLY WORKS, Dave Peters explains the ins and outs of credit.

Some of this is the information you can find elsewhere. But remember Dave is a loan officer. He reveals to you inside information about the lending industry, and how it is set up that you end up losing. Losing what? Money, of course.

As an example, there are things that mortgage brokers commonly do that cost you thousands of dollars extra. These are perfectly legal ways for those doing your loan to make extra money off of you.

The time to learn this information is before you get a loan. Once the loan is done, you'll never see that money again. It's gone. This book can save you thousands of dollars on a home loan.

"I guarantee that if you follow my advice in the book, your scores will climb into the top range of all scores in the country. 840 is the highest score I have ever seen. I also guarantee you'll learn ways to save thousands - even tens of thousands of dollars on your loans, credit cards, or even collection accounts of an average family."

- Dave Peters, Author

Much of the information in this book isn’t written anywhere else. Nowhere! Your creditors don’t want you to know how to keep the money in your pocket - they want it in theirs. And the credit bureaus work for the lenders, not you.

This book will show you how to turn the system to your advantage. Remember, it was written by a loan officer who has played the game for years, and is now revealing the secrets to you. The information was collected over the years by a man motivated to write loans. So he did the research to fully understand the industry, and learned all the secrets. In this book he shows you how to use these secrets to improve your credit score.

How to clean up your credit report

The second thing you have to do is get the bad items off your credit report. This is easier than you might think.

Credit repair is done by challenging the negative items on your credit report. By law, there are certain things that should not appear on your credit report. But in the real world, they often do. In addition to things that shouldn't even be on your credit report, quite often there is simply wrong information on your report.

Dave Peters Credit Repair Software allows you to take your credit report and challenge any item that is hurting your scores. You get full instructions on which items to challenge, how many you should try to remove at one time, etc.

This program gives you tools to clean up your report fully.

There are credit repair companies out there, and they will do for you exactly what this software will do for you. But their cost starts at around $500. This software is part of your credit restoration kit.

This makes credit repair a point-and-click job

You get a program that is very easy to use. You simply plug in your information, select a negative item from your credit report, and choose one of the legal challenges that applies to that item. The program lets you choose from twenty different legal protests to inaccurate, outdated or unverifiable information on your report. Print and mail the document off to the credit bureau, and they have to respond, by law.

The bureaus recognize the document as something they must deal with. So you'll get a response confirming that they got what you sent and what they did about it. It should be a removal or correction of the item, which will boost your credit score immediately. If the response wasn't a removal or correction, you simply choose another challenge that applies and repeat. No extra cost!

This program gives you results superior to any credit repair software or credit repair kit on the market - Dave made sure of it. With any PC you can improve your credit scores with the same or better success as any credit repair company.

How you can get a quick extra boost

The third thing you need to do is follow a few simple steps to dramatically improve your credit file.

Dave's CREDIT SCORE BOOSTER MANUAL was written to give you the extra boost you need right now. It contains additional tips and tricks to improve your credit score fast.

But the real treat is the last method outlined in the manual. This one technique is so powerful it can add ten years of good payment history to your credit report within 30 days. This quickly makes you look like a better credit risk to the lenders and boosts your score dramatically.

If you were to buy this manual on its own and read nothing else, this one method would make it well worth your time. It is amazingly simple and it is almost completely unknown. And it works every time.

Dave Peters' Credit Restoration Kit includes all products described above