credit cards Archives - Kind-of-Lost

Amex Platinum Authorized User Benefits: Worth It?

People ask me this constantly: is it worth adding someone as an authorized user on an Amex Platinum? Usually they mean one of two very different things — will the authorized user get the lounges and the travel perks, or will it help that person’s credit. The Amex Platinum authorized user benefits that matter for travel are not the ones that matter for your credit score, and confusing the two is how people end up overpaying. I sell authorized user tradelines for a living, so I spend most of my time on the half of that question the points blogs skip — the credit half.

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The Full Circle: How I Set Up My Tradeline Business to Run Itself

People who sell tradelines don’t talk about the setup much. Most of the content out there is aimed at buyers — how tradelines work, how much they cost, whether they’re worth it. But the seller side has its own logic, and once I had it figured out I realized the whole thing clicks together in a way I didn’t plan for. The most common questions I get are from buyers, but sellers are starting to find me too, and this post is for them.

Three Billing Cycles for Tradelines: Why I Switched

I’ve been selling authorized user tradelines for a few years now, and one thing I’ve been turning over in my head is the standard two-cycle product that most of the industry sells. Two billing cycles. Add the buyer, wait for two statement closes, remove them. That’s been the norm since before I got into this.

I’ve decided to move away from that. Going forward, every tradeline I sell — whether directly through this site or through the brokers I work with — runs for three billing cycles. Here’s why, and what it means if you’re thinking about either buying or selling tradelines.

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Scaling My Tradeline Business: How I Think About Growth

(How I think about growing beyond my own credit cards)

Anyone who runs a tradeline business for long enough hits the same wall. The work is straightforward, the demand is real, and the income is decent — but every time you think about growing, you run into the same problem: you can only have so many cards, and every card you add for this purpose concentrates more risk on your own credit file. There’s no way around it as long as the business is entirely dependent on your own accounts.

Remark Code Removed: Good or Bad? What It Actually Means

A buyer emailed me not long ago asking about something she’d seen on her credit report: “remark code removed.” She’d been deep in a credit dispute and had no idea whether this was good news, bad news, or just noise. I’ve gotten some version of this question enough times that I figured it was worth laying out clearly.

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