Personal blog on early retirement, selling tradelines, and analytics projects. I write about what I learn as I am learning it.
A lot of the advice on how to build credit to buy a house is technically correct but practically useless — “pay on time,” “keep utilization low,” “don’t open too many accounts.” That’s all true. It’s also the kind of advice that takes years to produce results, which isn’t helpful if you’re trying to qualify for something specific in the next six to twelve months.
Continue reading “How to Build Credit to Buy a House: What Works”
I get asked about credit sweeps occasionally — usually by people who’ve seen the term advertised somewhere alongside promises that sound almost too good. “Wipe your credit report clean.” “Start fresh.” The pitch is appealing, especially if you’re sitting on a report full of negatives. So what is a credit sweep, really? Understanding the mechanics — and where they cross from legal disputing into outright fraud — is worth doing before you hand anyone money.
Continue reading “What Is a Credit Sweep — and Why You Should Be Skeptical”
Buyers sometimes ask me whether rapid rescore is worth doing before they purchase a tradeline. It’s a fair question — both tools are trying to do roughly the same thing in the short term, and understanding what rapid rescore is, and what it isn’t, helps you figure out which lever actually makes sense for your situation.
Continue reading “What Is Rapid Rescore — and When Does It Actually Help?”
There’s a spoiler right at the top of the original version of this post: “You can buy tradelines from us.” Fair enough — but that’s skipping past the part that actually helps someone decide whether that’s the right move. There are three ways to get a tradeline, and each one has a different speed, cost, and risk profile. Worth understanding all three before you do anything.
Piggybacking credit is how I make money, so let me explain it from the inside. The short version: I hold a handful of credit cards with high limits and long histories, and people pay to be added as authorized users on those cards for a billing cycle or two. Their credit report picks up the account’s age and limit, their score moves, and I get paid. It’s a simple mechanism that the industry has turned into a surprisingly organized marketplace — and I’ve been on both sides of it. If you’ve ever wondered whether you can pay to be an authorized user on a stranger’s account, the honest answer is yes, and this is the post that walks you through how it actually works.
Continue reading “Piggybacking credit: how the paid version actually works”