Kind-of-Lost

Piggybacking credit companies: what to watch for

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 sold 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.

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Italy Digital Nomad Visa

I have Italian roots, and for years I’ve had this persistent fantasy of working from a terrace somewhere in Tuscany or a flat in Bologna — laptop open, espresso at hand, pretending I live there instead of just visiting. So when I started seriously researching digital nomad visas, Italy was the first one I looked into. The short version: Italy was late to formalize this, but the situation has changed, and there are real options now.

How many hard inquiries is too many? What I learned the hard way

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.

How many days is five months

“How many days in five months” is a very strange question to write a post about but I am learning about SEO (Search Engine Optimization). And using Ahrefs keyword research tool I found out the question is a very good keyword to target. At the end, I explain how to calculate it using Excel (or any spreadsheet).

This is what Google tells us:

“Die with Zero” by Bill Perkins: Book Report (haha)

The premise of “Die with Zero” sounds provocative: Bill Perkins argues you should plan to spend all your money before you die, optimizing for maximum life experiences rather than maximum wealth at death. Not “die debt-free” — that’s a different book. Perkins is talking about people who will almost certainly die with millions in unspent savings because they never gave themselves permission to spend it on things that actually mattered while they were healthy enough to enjoy them. The title is deliberately extreme. The actual argument is more nuanced than it sounds.

I picked it up because I’m interested in the other end of the FIRE question — not just how to achieve financial independence, but what to actually do with it.