Personal blog on early retirement, tradelines, and analytics projects. I write about what I learn as I am learning it.
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”
The one I hear most often: “I keep a small balance on my card every month because my dad told me it helps your score.” It doesn’t. That particular credit myth has probably cost people hundreds of dollars in unnecessary interest. There are a handful of beliefs like that floating around — things that sound like they should be true but aren’t — and some of them are actively hurting the scores of people who follow them.
I’ve been selling tradelines and talking to buyers about their credit situations for a while now. The same credit myths come up constantly. Here are the ones worth actually understanding.
Buyers ask me versions of this question more than you’d think: “I financed my phone — does that count toward my credit?” The honest answer is: it depends entirely on whether your carrier reports to the credit bureaus, and many don’t. Which means a lot of people are paying $50 a month assuming they’re building credit history when nothing is actually hitting their report. I also cover How to build credit as a teenager in more detail in a separate post.
The difference between secured and unsecured credit cards comes down to one thing: a deposit. With a secured card, you put cash down upfront and that becomes your credit limit. With an unsecured card, no deposit — the issuer extends you credit based on your history. That’s really it. Everything else — how it reports to the bureaus, how it affects your score — works the same.
The phrase income based loans gets used to describe two pretty different things: student loan repayment plans set by the federal government, and alternative personal loans where the lender puts heavier weight on your income than your credit score when deciding to approve you. Both are legitimate uses of the term. This post focuses on the personal loan version — what it means when a lender says they evaluate your income rather than your credit, and whether that’s actually a good deal.
Continue reading “Income Based Loans: What They Are and Who Can Actually Use Them”