Personal blog on early retirement, selling tradelines, and analytics projects. I write about what I learn as I am learning it.
The short answer to which type of debt is most often secured: mortgages. By total volume and by prevalence, mortgage debt is the dominant form of secured borrowing. But the fuller answer is more useful than that — because secured vs. unsecured debt affects your credit profile differently, and understanding the distinction helps you make better decisions about what accounts to carry and how to build the strongest possible credit file.
Continue reading “Which Type of Debt Is Most Often Secured?”
One of the most persistent myths in personal finance is that getting married somehow combines your credit scores into a single “married credit score.” It doesn’t work that way — and understanding why matters a lot when you’re about to make major financial decisions together. Your credit files stay separate after marriage. What changes is that your financial choices start overlapping in ways that can affect both of them. Related: credit repair for veterans — worth reading if this applies to you.
Continue reading “Married Credit Score: What Changes and What Doesn’t”
People building credit from scratch often lean on their student loans as their main account — and then wonder why their score isn’t moving the way they expected. The answer usually comes down to the type of debt. Are student loans installment or revolving? They’re installment loans, and that distinction matters more than most people realize when it comes to how your credit score is calculated. Related: which type of debt is most often secured — worth reading if this applies to you.
Continue reading “Are Student Loans Installment or Revolving?”
Buyers ask me this one a lot — usually right after they’ve spent twenty minutes Googling tradeline companies and aren’t sure if the whole thing is legitimate. The short answer: yes, you can pay to be added as an authorized user on someone else’s credit card. That’s actually the entire business model I run at kindoflost.com.
But there’s a longer answer worth reading before you spend money, because not all AU tradelines are the same, and a few details can make the difference between a purchase that moves your score and one that doesn’t.
A lot of people come across tradelines specifically because they’re trying to qualify for something — a car loan, an apartment, or in many cases, a home improvement loan. Their credit score is the problem, they’ve got a renovation project staring them down, and they need a way to close the gap fast. I sell authorized user tradelines, so I hear this situation regularly. Here’s what I actually tell people about how to get a home improvement loan with bad credit.
Continue reading “How to Get a Home Improvement Loan with Bad Credit”