Personal blog on early retirement 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”
Buyers ask me this every week: can I get a tradeline for free? The honest answer is yes — but the free version comes with tradeoffs that the paid version doesn’t. Understanding what you’re actually trading off helps you make the right call for your situation.
No, a debit card doesn’t build credit. It’s one of those questions that sounds like it should have a more nuanced answer — and credit content on the internet loves to imply there might be one — but there isn’t. Debit cards pull from your checking account. Nothing gets reported to the credit bureaus. Your credit score doesn’t move. That’s the full answer to the core question, and you can stop reading here if that’s all you needed.
