Personal blog on early retirement, selling tradelines, and analytics projects. I write about what I learn as I am learning it.
Costa Rica keeps coming up in conversations about digital nomad visas, and it’s not hard to see why. The country launched its remote work program in a clean, accessible package — a defined income threshold, a single-entry point for applications, and a one-year permit that’s renewable. It’s not the cheapest option in Latin America, and it’s certainly not Europe, but it occupies an interesting middle ground that a lot of remote workers find genuinely appealing.
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”
As I was planning (daydreaming) about my always-postponed digital nomad life I watched, on a plane, of all places, the movie “Nomadland”. The movie is not really about a digital nomad but a “regular” nomad. It won the Oscar(!?) and it is an interesting movie. But it made me think again about life on the road and the movies that portray it. My two favorites by far are “Into the wild” (I also have the book but never read it) and “The motorcycle diaries”.
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”