Personal blog on early retirement, selling tradelines, and analytics projects. I write about what I learn as I am learning it.
People come to me with a specific goal more often than a vague one. Not “I want better credit” — more like “I need a 680 by March to apply for this card.” The credit card question comes up constantly, and the answer is more nuanced than a single number. It depends entirely on which card you’re applying for.
Continue reading “What Credit Score Do You Need to Get a Credit Card?”
Someone asked me this in a comment once — I think after a post about credit cards — and I realized I didn’t actually know the answer with any precision. I knew the $10,000 threshold existed somewhere, but I didn’t know the details: whether that applied to carry-on, checked bags, domestic, international, or all of the above. So I looked it up. Turns out there’s more nuance than most people assume.
Fraud in personal finance usually makes you think of someone stealing your identity — a stranger opening a credit card in your name, draining your account, the whole nightmare scenario. That’s third-party fraud. First-party fraud is different, and in some ways more interesting: it’s when the borrower IS the fraud.
Continue reading “What Is First Party Fraud? How It Works and Who Does It”
Most people think they understand their credit card. They know the limit, the interest rate, maybe the rewards rate if they’ve been paying attention. But there’s a whole layer underneath that — issuer quirks, authorized user mechanics, utilization timing — that most cardholders never learn about until something bites them. I found out some of this the hard way. Here are 7 things you probably didn’t know about credit cards that are actually worth knowing.
Continue reading “7 Things You Didn’t Know About Credit Cards”
Technically, no. In the US, you have to be 18 to apply for a credit card in your own name — that’s the CARD Act. And honestly, even at 18, most major issuers want to see independent income before they’ll approve you without a cosigner, so 16-year-olds are locked out of the traditional credit card application process. But “can’t get a credit card” is different from “can’t build credit,” and the distinction matters.
