Personal blog on early retirement, selling tradelines, and analytics projects. I write about what I learn as I am learning it.
At one point I had around ten hard inquiries on my credit report at the same time. That wasn’t recklessness — it was the side effect of opening new cards to season them for tradeline sales. But it made me think hard (no pun intended) about what inquiries actually do to a score, versus what people think they do. The answer is more nuanced than most posts let on. Related: does removing hard inquiries increase credit score — worth reading if this applies to you.
The question I get from buyers is usually some version of: does it matter which tradeline company you go with? Or is a tradeline a tradeline? The company matters less than the card — specifically which issuer it’s from, how old it is, and what the limit is. Those are the three things that determine how much an authorized user tradeline actually moves your score, and they’re the variables most buyers don’t dig into before purchasing. If you’re wondering whether you can pay to be an authorized user on someone else’s account, the short answer is yes — and it’s a common way to build credit quickly.
Continue reading “Authorized User Tradelines: How They Work”
Are you curious about your credit score? Do you know what a FICO pie chart is? Let’s dive into the world of credit scores and find out more.
Now, let’s talk about the FICO pie chart. It’s a visual representation of your FICO score that breaks down each component’s weight. Think of it as a pie chart with different-sized slices that represent the percentage of each component’s impact on your overall score. It’s a helpful tool for understanding where you can make improvements to increase your score.
People ask me some version of the guarantor vs cosigner question more often than you’d expect — usually because they’re trying to figure out if buying an authorized user tradeline is similar to having one or the other. It’s not, but explaining why forces you to actually sort out what these two terms mean, because even landlords and lenders use them interchangeably when they shouldn’t.
The most common message I get from people who find this site isn’t “how do I buy a tradeline?” — it’s “is there a way to get one for free?” Fair question, especially if you’re not sure whether tradelines are even worth paying for. The short answer is yes, there are free ways to get tradelines. But each one comes with a real limitation that the generic SEO posts skip over, and knowing how to get free tradelines is mostly about knowing which limitation you can live with.
Continue reading “How to get free tradelines: what actually works”