Personal blog on early retirement, a little traveling, and analytics projects. I write about what I learn as I am learning it.
Buyers ask me this more than you’d expect — usually right after they’ve added a tradeline and are watching Credit Karma every day waiting for the number to move. So let me answer the actual question and then explain the part that matters more: what Credit Karma’s score is, and when to trust it.
Continue reading “How often does Credit Karma update? What to actually know”
That phrase — “proportion of loan balances to loan amounts is too high” — shows up in FICO reason codes and on monitoring sites like Credit Karma as one of the factors pulling your score down. It sounds bureaucratic, but what it’s describing is actually pretty simple: your installment loans still have a lot of the original balance left to pay off, and that’s costing you points.
Continue reading “Proportion of loan balances too high: what it means”
If a lender cancels or forgives a debt — a credit card balance settlement, a short sale on a house, a personal loan they’ve written off — the IRS generally treats that forgiven amount as taxable income. That’s not intuitive, but it’s how it works: money you borrowed and didn’t pay back is treated as if you received it.
Continue reading “Insolvency Worksheet: How to Fill It Out for Taxes”
“Set for Life” by Scott Trench is one of those books that’s more useful in your late twenties than your late thirties, which isn’t a knock — it’s just the honest audience. Trench built his framework from his own experience going from broke recent grad to financially independent relatively quickly, and the whole book is oriented around aggressive early-stage wealth-building. If you’re past that stage, you’ll still find useful ideas, but the action items are most relevant when you’re starting from zero.
I ported out of Google Fi after using it for a few years, and the process was smoother than I expected — once I understood what information I needed upfront. The main thing that trips people up is not having their account number and PIN ready before they contact the new carrier. Get those two pieces of information first and the rest is straightforward. This post is a companion to my Google Fi review for anyone who’s already decided to leave and just needs to know how.
