Personal blog on early retirement, a little traveling, and analytics projects. I write about what I learn as I am learning it.
Every time someone talks about a “5 minute credit score trick,” they usually mean one of two things: paying down a balance quickly, or adding an authorized user tradeline. The “5 minute” part is actually accurate — the setup itself takes minutes. The results don’t. That distinction matters, and I want to be upfront about it before getting into what actually works.
Continue reading “5 Minute Credit Score Trick: What It Actually Does”
At some point while reviewing your credit report, you’ll probably see a list of inquiries — some labeled “hard” and some labeled with terms like “informative research credit inquiry” or variations on that phrase. The hard ones you likely recognize: those are from credit applications. The informative research ones are different, and understanding what they are (and what they aren’t) is worth a few minutes.
Buyers ask me this pretty regularly: does Chase actually report authorized users? The short answer is yes — Chase reports adult authorized users to all three major credit bureaus. But there’s a nuance here that most posts miss entirely, and it matters depending on why you’re asking.
Continue reading “Does Chase Report Authorized Users? (Yes, for Adults)”
I get messages from buyers who are confused — sometimes panicked — when a tradeline they paid for disappears from their credit report. “It’s gone” is usually how they put it. What they don’t realize is that there are two completely different things that “tradeline deletion” can mean, and the path forward is totally different depending on which one they’re experiencing.
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If you pulled your credit score and saw “lack of recent revolving account information” listed as a reason code, you’re looking at one of the more fixable items on that list. It means the scoring model doesn’t have enough recent activity from credit cards or lines of credit to fully assess your creditworthiness — and there are a few straightforward ways to address it.
Continue reading “Lack of Recent Revolving Account Information”