credit cards Archives - Kind of Lost

Airline Miles Are Worth What You’d Actually Have Paid

Back in 2018 I wrote a post ranking seven levels of credit card usage, and somewhere in the middle I said I prefer airline miles. I was very proud of the pun that followed (your miles may vary). What that post did not have was a single number to explain why.

So this is the number. More precisely, it is the argument that the number everybody quotes, what are airline miles worth in cents per mile, is the wrong one to look at. A mile is worth what you would actually have paid for the thing you used it on, minus what you still paid, compared against what the same spending would have earned in plain cash. That’s less exciting than a points-valuation chart, and it gives a smaller answer most of the time.

Chase Sapphire Reserve Authorized User Benefits

Chase Sapphire Reserve authorized user benefits come up a lot when someone wants to share their travel perks — or quietly hopes adding a family member will lift that person’s credit. Both are reasonable goals, but they pull in different directions, and the answer to “is it worth it” depends entirely on which one you’re chasing. I sold authorized user tradelines for years, so people still bring me the credit version of this question all the time, and the honest answer is more interesting than the card’s marketing.

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.

Remark Code Removed: What It Means on Credit Karma

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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Primary Tradelines for Sale: What You’re Actually Buying

Let me be direct about something before we go any further: “primary tradelines for sale” is almost always a red flag phrase. If you’ve been searching for this and landed on a site actually selling what they claim are primary tradelines, read carefully before you hand over any money.

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