Personal blog on early retirement, selling tradelines, and analytics projects. I write about what I learn as I am learning it.
Of all the factors that go into a credit score, credit utilization rate is the one I find most buyers fixating on — and for good reason. It’s also one of the few you can actually change in a matter of weeks rather than years.
Continue reading “What Is Credit Utilization Rate? (And Why It Matters)”
People ask me how to purchase a tradeline like it’s a complicated process. It isn’t, really — but the part most buyers get wrong isn’t the how, it’s the what. What you’re buying matters a lot more than where you buy it.
Continue reading “Purchase a Tradeline: What You’re Actually Buying”
Piggybacking credit companies all sell the same basic thing: they add you as an authorized user on someone else’s seasoned credit card so that card’s age and limit post to your credit report. I know this because I’m on the other side of that transaction — I sell authorized user tradelines from my own cards, both through brokers and directly here. So when I look at the companies advertising this, I’m not guessing at how they work; I’ve listed cards with several of them and watched how they treat buyers and sellers. This is the honest version of what you’re actually paying for and how to tell a real operation from one that’ll waste your money. If you want the mechanics first, here’s how piggybacking credit actually works from the inside.
Continue reading “Piggybacking credit companies: what to watch for”
At one point I had around ten hard inquiries on my credit report at the same time. That wasn’t recklessness — it was the side effect of opening new cards to season them for tradeline sales. But it made me think hard (no pun intended) about what inquiries actually do to a score, versus what people think they do. The answer is more nuanced than most posts let on. Related: does removing hard inquiries increase credit score — worth reading if this applies to you.
The question I get from buyers is usually some version of: does it matter which tradeline company you go with? Or is a tradeline a tradeline? The company matters less than the card — specifically which issuer it’s from, how old it is, and what the limit is. Those are the three things that determine how much an authorized user tradeline actually moves your score, and they’re the variables most buyers don’t dig into before purchasing. If you’re wondering whether you can pay to be an authorized user on someone else’s account, the short answer is yes — and it’s a common way to build credit quickly.
Continue reading “Authorized User Tradelines: How They Work”