Personal blog on early retirement, selling tradelines, and analytics projects. I write about what I learn as I am learning it.
When you check your credit score and get an “unavailable” message instead of a number, it usually means one of a few things. And in my experience talking with people who buy tradelines, the most common cause is the simplest one: there isn’t enough information on your credit report for the scoring model to work with. Related: informative research credit inquiry — worth reading if this applies to you.
The question comes up a lot: does Carvana report to credit bureaus? It’s a reasonable thing to wonder before you finance a car through them, especially if you’re actively building or rebuilding credit and want to know whether those payments will actually count. Short answer: yes, your payments get reported — but not by Carvana directly.
Buyers ask me occasionally whether taking over someone else’s car loan is a realistic option or just a thing people think exists. The answer is: it’s real, but it’s harder to pull off than most articles make it sound. Most lenders don’t allow loan assumptions anymore, and the ones that do have specific requirements that aren’t always obvious upfront. Related: can you transfer a car loan to someone else — worth reading if this applies to you.
People ask me about credit card approvals all the time, usually right after asking about tradelines. The questions are connected — someone working on their credit profile is often trying to qualify for a specific card, not just fix a number on a dashboard. So I’ve thought about the minimum income for a credit card more than the average person. Here’s what I actually know. Related: why did i get denied for a credit card — worth reading if this applies to you.
When someone asks me if a tradeline will help their credit, one of my first questions is whether they have any public records on their report. It changes the picture significantly. Public records are the heaviest derogatory marks in the scoring model — they’re not like a late payment, which fades in a couple of years. The main one that still shows up, bankruptcy, can sit on your report for a decade.
Continue reading “What Is a Public Record on a Credit Report?”