Personal blog on early retirement, selling tradelines, 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”
People ask me this one a lot — usually after they’ve already tried a dealer and gotten a rough quote. The short answer is yes, you can lease a car with bad credit. The longer answer is that it’ll cost you more, and knowing exactly why gives you a real shot at changing that before you sign anything.
Continue reading “Can you lease a car with bad credit? What to actually expect”
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”
Someone messaged me last year asking if there was a way to raise their score 80 points in two weeks. They had a mortgage closing coming up and their broker had told them they needed to hit a certain threshold to lock in the rate they wanted. That’s about as ASAP as credit repair gets — a real deadline with real money on the line.
Continue reading “ASAP Credit Repair: What Actually Moves Your Score”