Kind-of-Lost

“Credit piggybacking” is what the industry calls becoming an authorized user on someone else’s credit card. The name sounds a little undignified, but the mechanics are straightforward: their account history shows up on your credit report, and if the card has a long history and a high limit with low utilization, that adds something useful to your file. I sell authorized user tradelines for exactly this reason — it’s the paid, structured version of the same thing. 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 “Credit piggybacking: how it works and what buyers actually get”

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.