Personal blog on early retirement and analytics projects. I write about what I learn as I am learning it.
Every year around this time I get a wave of people asking whether tradelines are still worth buying. “Are they still working in 2026?” Short answer: yes. Longer answer: it depends on what you’re buying and who you’re buying from — and that part hasn’t changed since I started doing this.
Auto loan tradelines come up in my conversations more often than I’d expect, and almost always from buyers who’ve seen them listed somewhere and are trying to figure out if they’re legitimate. The short answer: the product as commonly sold either doesn’t work the way it’s described or involves a level of risk that most buyers don’t understand when they purchase it.
Continue reading “Auto Loan Tradelines: Why the Product Doesn’t Exist”
If you’ve looked at a credit report in any detail, you’ve probably seen accounts categorized as open or closed. Open tradelines are the active accounts currently feeding data into your credit score — and the health of those accounts, their limits, their ages, and their utilization is what makes up the bulk of what FICO actually calculates. Understanding what makes an open tradeline valuable is worth the time before you spend money trying to add one.
Continue reading “Open Tradelines: What They Mean and Why They Matter”
Aged primary tradelines for sale show up alongside authorized user tradelines in a lot of the same places, and buyers sometimes ask me whether I offer them or where to find them. The honest answer: I don’t sell them, and I’d think carefully before buying them anywhere.
Continue reading “Aged Primary Tradelines for Sale: What to Know”
Auto tradelines come up enough in buyer conversations that I want to address them directly. The phrase gets used to describe a few different things, and depending on which one a seller is pitching, you’re either looking at something worthless, something fraudulent, or something that doesn’t exist in the form being advertised.
Continue reading “Auto Tradelines for Sale: Why Most Are Fake”