Personal blog on early retirement and analytics projects. I write about what I learn as I am learning it.
Buyers who come to me about tradelines sometimes mention they’ve been using Sezzle for months, paying on time, and wondering why their credit score hasn’t moved. The answer is usually the same: standard Sezzle doesn’t report to credit bureaus. Your on-time payment record exists in Sezzle’s system, but Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion have no idea it’s happening. There is a version of Sezzle that changes this — but it requires opting in, and most users don’t know it exists.
You’re looking at your credit report and one of the accounts says “consumer disputes reinvestigation in progress.” It showed up after you filed a dispute, and now you want to know what it actually means — how long it stays, what happens when it clears, and what you should be doing in the meantime.
Continue reading “Consumer Disputes Reinvestigation in Progress”
One of the most persistent myths in personal finance is that getting married somehow combines your credit scores into a single “married credit score.” It doesn’t work that way — and understanding why matters a lot when you’re about to make major financial decisions together. Your credit files stay separate after marriage. What changes is that your financial choices start overlapping in ways that can affect both of them. Related: credit repair for veterans — worth reading if this applies to you. If the marriage is ending rather than starting, credit repair after divorce covers what actually helps.
Continue reading “Married Credit Score: What Changes and What Doesn’t”
People building credit from scratch often lean on their student loans as their main account — and then wonder why their score isn’t moving the way they expected. The answer usually comes down to the type of debt. Are student loans installment or revolving? They’re installment loans, and that distinction matters more than most people realize when it comes to how your credit score is calculated. Related: which type of debt is most often secured — worth reading if this applies to you.
Continue reading “Are Student Loans Installment or Revolving?”
Buyers ask me this one a lot — usually right after they’ve spent twenty minutes Googling tradeline companies and aren’t sure if the whole thing is legitimate. The short answer: yes, you can pay to be added as an authorized user on someone else’s credit card. That’s actually the entire business model I run at kindoflost.com.
But there’s a longer answer worth reading before you spend money, because not all AU tradelines are the same, and a few details can make the difference between a purchase that moves your score and one that doesn’t.