Sensible ways to manage and repair your credit Need a credit makeover? You’re not alone: in the U.S., outstanding credit card and other types of revolving debt have jumped over 20% in the past decade, and millions of Americans are struggling with one or more credit-related issues. Whether you’re just working on improving your score or need some sound advice on how to make debt a thing of the past, the latest edition of Credit Repair Kit for Dummies is packed with reliable information for escaping the quicksand and taking the concrete steps needed to build up a solid score. There are many reasons why you might have a subpar credit score—mortgage and auto debt, student loans, impacts of disasters such as COVID-19, and even identity theft. This book covers these scenarios and more, helping you identify the reasons behind a lower score and providing you with straightforward, proven techniques for managing it back to where you want it to be. Also included are sample credit reports, forms, templates, and other helpful online tools to use to whip your score into decent shape. Add information to your report to beef-up a low score Avoid, reduce, and get rid of mortgage, credit card, student loan, and auto debt Keep a good credit score during a period of unemployment Fight back against identity theft A good credit score is always a great thing to have. This book shows you how to put even the worst credit situations behind you and make a poor score just a bad—and distant—memory.

A women’s common-sense guide to dating, from the authors of The Breakup Repair Kit. Whatever happened to the great Saturday night date you looked forward to all week? Is it true “all the good ones are already taken?” Do you feel your life is on hold until you meet just the right person and ride white horses off into the Technicolor sunset? If even one of those thoughts has flickered through your mind after a nightmarish blind date, bitter breakup, or speed-dating bump, this book is for you! Authors Marni Kamins and Janice Macleod offer the wisdom and comfort of their own expertise and show you exactly how to have the fabulous love life you deserve. Praise for The Dating Repair Kit “This book is honest, inspiring, supportive, and funny—it truly is a girlfriend you can fit in your purse.” —Elizabeth Carr & Theresa Hoiles, authors of Love, Luck and Love “Like good friends, Marni and Janice share their strengths and help you find your own. This little book inspires you to take the leap of faith called love.” —Stephanie Naman, author of BarCode “The Dating Repair Kit will prove to be the definitive playbook for the ‘game of love.’” —Margie Lapanja, author of Food Men Love and Romancing the Stove

Inspiring, profound, intimate, and moving, this updated edition of the classic self-help book brings solace, hope, and advice to anyone who has suffered loss. Everyone experiences grief, but few books offer real help with the debilitating emotions of bereavement. Now, an internationally respected authority on personal change maps the terrain between life as it was and life as it can be. Readers can move at their own pace through the seven distinct phases of loss and can work towards a stronger, more balanced self. The author's own story of the loss of a young husband, combined with the tales of dozens of individuals, and the most recent research on coping with loss, helps readers to become happier, healthier, and wiser beings.

Manage and repair your credit Credit card debt is the third largest source of household indebtedness. Credit Repair Kit For Dummies gives you the tools you need to repair your credit. This new edition covers: major changes with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's (CFPB) inquiry into overdraft practices and their effect on consumers; dealing with the effect of tightened credit markets on those with good, marginal, or bad credit; best ways to recover from mortgage related score hits or minimize damage after walking away from a home; updated Vantage Score information; updated coverage on reporting programs like FICO Score watch, etc.; what makes a good FICO score today; a new section on significant others (boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse) and credit/debt sharing; Debt Relief Act in a mortgage meltdown situation; the latest tips and advice on dealing with identity theft and annoying collection calls; and more. Online you'll find sample credit reports, forms, templates, and other helpful tools to help whip your credit into shape. Updated credit score examples with new ranges New information about IRS exceptions to the Mortgage Forgiveness Advice and tips about adding information to a credit report, and beefing-up thin credit Useful, downloadable, forms and tools on Dummies.com If you have mediocre credit and want or need to better manage it in order to get a job, reduce insurance costs, qualify for banking products, and more, Credit Repair Kit For Dummies has it covered.

California’s burning out of control, and arson is suspected. No one has a clue how and why fires are being set off all over the state. David Spaulding, an agent with the FBI, has gone undercover to search for the truth. He becomes acquainted—and fascinated with—Carmen Ruiz, an attractive woman who has just signed on as an arson specialist in training with the California Division of Forestry. Will Dave and his team be able to track down the perpetrator in time to prevent another disastrous burn? Or will evil forces, too strong to control, prevail?

Best known for his novel Trout Fishing in America, American writer Richard Gary Brautigan (1935-1984) published eleven novels, ten poetry collections, and two story collections, as well as five volumes of collected work, several nonfiction essays, and a record album of spoken voice recordings. Brautigan's idiosyncratic style and humor caused him to be identified with the counterculture movement of the 1960s. The authors of many of these 32 essays knew Brautigan personally and professionally; others came to know and respect him through a cultivated connection with his writings. The essays--many of which are new, others of which were published in obscure journals--combine personal remembrance of the man and critical appraisal of his still-controversial works. Includes previously unpublished photographs and artworks.

Confident and robust, Jubilee Hitchhiker is an comprehensive biography of late novelist and poet Richard Brautigan, author of Troutfishing in America and A Confederate General from Big Sur, among many others. When Brautigan took his own life in September of 1984 his close friends and network of artists and writers were devastated though not entirely surprised. To many, Brautigan was shrouded in enigma, erratic and unpredictable in his habits and presentation. But his career was formidable, an inspiration to young writers like Hjortsberg trying to get their start. Brautigan's career wove its way through both the Beat–influenced San Francisco Renaissance in the 1950s and the "Flower Power" hippie movement of the 1960s; while he never claimed direct artistic involvement with either period, Jubilee Hitchhiker also delves deeply into the spirited times in which he lived. As Hjortsberg guides us through his search to uncover Brautigan as a man the reader is pulled deeply into the writer's world. Ultimately this is a work that seeks to connect the Brautigan known to his fans with the man who ended his life so abruptly in 1984 while revealing the close ties between his writing and the actual events of his life. Part history, part biography, and part memoir this etches the portrait of a man destroyed by his genius.

Robert Lawrence's new book of poems is a type of travelogue set in Japan.

Inspired by a startling midwinter dream of ancient hills and prehistoric shrines, the author builds her own stone circle in the wilderness and begins a journal of exploration into the nature of cyclical time, the sacred power of everyday, and the meaning of the eternal feminine. From the Art of Gardening to the Zen of Housepainting, Walking in Circles is a quiet chronicle of midlife passage and homegrown ways, reminding us that our lives are lived in moments, in the thoughts, memories, and rituals spun out in daily life. It is a book about time, the time of our lives, the remembered time we keep in our bodies and minds, the ticking time we use to measure out our days, and the hauntingly timeless time of dreams and moons and ancient stones. Comments from Readers: This book is incredible! Its great reading. I loved it and it made me remember a lot of things about my own life and rekindled a desire to read. I especially enjoyed its vivid descriptiveness and tempo. - T.M. (jazz musician, Chicago) How amazing and awesome when the truth of a life contains such wisdom. Your imagery is often breathtaking. Sensitive and thought provoking with unending layers of revelation. A brave experiment. - J.S. (poet, Chicago, IL) To say I liked your book would be a vast understatement; to say I loved it would be to leave so many important things left unsaid, like how it speaks to me and takes me to the place where I need to be. Thank you. If I could write, it would be what I would like to say and how I would like to say it. I read it straight through, stopping only to sleep. - A.S. (businesswoman, Denver, CO) Im only 53 pages into it, but I had to stop to write and tell you- its great! The language is fresh, evocative, and poetic. Great work, beautiful storytelling. - M.R. (psychotherapist, Chicago, IL) Your writing is beautiful, lyrical. I love it. Youve got a great book here. - M.T. (college admissions counselor, Montpelier, VT) Before I had a chance to get to your manuscript, something unusual happened. My husband, who rarely reads and never stays up past ten, picked it up and read late into the night, finally finishing at the breakfast table with the words, Wow! Youve got to read this book! So I was psyched. The book is wonderful. Deep, rich, and vivid. - B.A.C. (therapist, Lake Forest, IL) A friend sent your book up a few weeks ago and Im writing to tell you how much I enjoyed it. It was like being engaged in a long conversation with an old friend. All through the book I kept saying Yes! Yes! Now another friend is reading it and she says youve inspired her to begin writing a journal, and after that Bonnie will read it you already have a little fan club up here in Baraga County. - M.D. (artist, Baraga, MI)