Personal blog on early retirement, selling tradelines, and analytics projects. I write about what I learn as I am learning it.
If you’ve seen “too many consumer finance company accounts” on your credit score reason codes, you’re looking at a penalty that most people don’t know exists — and that most credit advice sites gloss over completely. Here’s what it actually means.
Continue reading “Too Many Consumer Finance Company Accounts”
People ask me all the time how to increase their credit limit — whether there’s a fast way to get a higher number. The honest answer is: sometimes yes, sometimes no — and the “yes” cases are usually the ones where someone already understands how credit limits actually get set. Let me walk through what’s worked, what’s a waste of time, and where authorized user tradelines fit into this.
AU tradelines — authorized user tradelines — come up constantly in conversations about building or rebuilding credit. The concept is simple enough: someone adds you to their credit card as an authorized user, that account’s history posts to your credit report, and your score reacts to the new data. But “simple concept” and “no nuances” are very different things, and there are enough quirks in how this actually works that it’s worth going through them properly.
Continue reading “AU Tradelines: What They Are and How They Work”
La mayoría de los artículos sobre cómo pagar tarjetas de crédito son básicamente lo mismo: haz un presupuesto, paga más del mínimo, método bola de nieve, método avalancha. No está mal, pero tampoco dice nada que no sepas ya. Lo que me interesa más — porque lo veo desde el lado del crédito — es qué pasa con tu puntaje mientras estás en ese proceso de pago, y cómo puedes usar ese tiempo para mejorar ambas cosas a la vez.
Continue reading “Trucos para pagar tarjetas de crédito (y subir el score)”
There’s really only one credit score hack that reliably works — and it’s not a loophole, not a dispute letter trick, not some 72-hour bureau glitch someone posted about on Reddit. It’s becoming an authorized user on a well-managed credit card. I know that sounds almost too boring to be a “hack,” but bear with me.
Continue reading “The Credit Score Hack That Actually Works”