Secrets Of The 800+ Club: How To Raise Your Credit Score, Maintain Good Credit, and Live The Life Of Unicorns
by Terrell Dinkins
One Bucket Nation

 

“A comprehensive guide to understanding your personal credit score and improving it.

This latest from professional financial advisor Dinkins, the author of One Bucket at a Time (2015), concentrates on the core element of personal finance: the individual credit score. Right from the start of this book, the author stresses its overwhelming importance: The score “not only determine[s] the type of mail that comes to our boxes, but it also determines the price we pay for our homes and cars, and even whether we receive a loan if we want to start a business,” she writes. She points out that some people are so desperate to clean up their score that they’re willing to pay exorbitant fees at credit-renovation seminars to do so, but she assures her readers that this isn’t strictly necessary (“Credit repair companies do not have a magic bullet”); instead, she shows, in this book, how people can do a lot to help fix their credit scores themselves. Dinkins writes about all of this with simple, encouraging clarity and inviting notes of humor (at one point noting “I think I’ve stressed this point ad nauseam, don’t you think?”). A great amount of valuable information is compressed into fewer than 130fast-moving pages. In that small space, the author explains to readers what credit is, how it works, why it’s important, and how to establish it at the beginning of one’s financial life; she also informatively reveals the natures of scams that guarantee quick credit renovation. In addition, she earnestly tells readers that there’s little room for compromise when a credit score decreases: “If you have an 800+ credit score, your score can drop fifty points and you will still receive great rates on credit,” she writes. “If you have a 750 credit score and your score drops 50 points, you are no longer considered an excellent borrower.”

An intelligently organized and optimistic guide to repairing one’s credit.” ––– Kirkus Reviews

One Bucket at a Time: A Woman’s Guide to Creating Wealth
by Terrell Dinkins
BookLogix

Reviewed by John E. Roper

“I want those who have the means to do so to become millionaires because this kind of wealth opens a world of opportunities to their children and them.”

Few people dream of working hard for a paycheck until they drop dead. Instead, most hope to one day be able to slip away from the workforce and enjoy their golden years with some form of financial security. Yet many adults are far away from the goal of having enough money to sustain them when the time comes to retire. Demographically, women are the most vulnerable to economic troubles for a wide range of reasons which is why the author has written this helpful guide primarily for them. However, most of the excellent advice Dinkins offers applies to anyone who wishes to tame the money monster in their lives and adequately prepare for the future.

Dinkins begins by outlining some of the unique challenges women may face over the course of their lives and then starts to detail how these can be overcome. A vital tool in the process is learning how to develop a realistic budget that is proactive rather than simply reactive. This requires an honest evaluation of how one normally spends a monthly income by tracking expenses and then making some tough decisions. For example, Dinkins shares how she discovered she was spending over $900 annually on green tea lattes at Starbucks. By investing that money at a rate of six percent she could bank over $81,000 over a 30-year period! At the heart of the book, though, is her practical system of four “money buckets” which can help make long-term financial stability a reality.

Throughout her well-written and engaging book, Dinkins uses her experience as a financial advisor to clear up monetary misconceptions and demonstrate how almost anyone with enough hard work and smart planning can retire financially secure. Invaluable and insightful, this is a guide not to be missed.

RECOMMENDED by the USR

“This is a powerful and necessary read. Terrell provides proof that with the proper combination of knowledge, guts, and desire, anyone can shift their finances from hopeless to hopeful. Here lies a fascinating and inspiring work.”

—Dennis Kimbro, Author of The Wealth Choice

One Bucket at a Time: A Woman’s Guide to Creating Wealth is the blueprint that twenty-first century women (and men) have been waiting for. No matter what generation you identify with, and no matter how different our financial concerns are, this book provides a solution in a worthwhile, short read.”

—Katerina Taylor, President & CEO, DeKalb Chamber of Commerce  

One Bucket at a Time

Terrell Dinkins

Reviewed by Diane Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review

The concept of wealth building has been one typically directed toward men, but that arena is about to change as aging women realize that their lack of preparedness is about to translate to working into their seventies to meet their retirement goals.

One Bucket at a Time is thus a top recommendation for women who haven’t previously considered the opportunities involved in wealth building, and who seek a direct connection between present and future lifestyles and how to fund these goals.

Chapters focus on the author’s “bucket system” of handling and building this wealth, offering a step-by-step, progressive method of rethinking money management strategies that go beyond savings accounts and delve deeply into the various options of how to make existing and future money work well.

The key to all this lies in “creating sustainable wealth,” and the advice comes from a woman who has inherited neither wealth nor knowledge. She did enter the banking world at a young point in her career, though, and her observations of clients and their approaches contribute to an evolving sense of how wealth is accumulated and nurtured.

From common errors in logic involving the lack of a budget, to short-term thinking about goals, to paying off one’s home before retirement and not placing all one’s wealth-building income in the stock market, chapters review common pitfalls and opportunities alike and provide a road map that includes many precautions (such as taking advantage of an employer’s free programs while understanding that benefits can be left behind upon leaving that employer).

The basic premise here is that “women should be in control of their habits and behavior around money.” Women seeking the mechanics of such control will find One Bucket at a Time an accessible and informative read, filled with case history examples and clear discussions of how wealth is acquired and managed.