You know my favorite fact about credit scores? Paying your utility bills on time for your whole life will not raise your credit score one point. Forty years on time every month nobody cares. However missing enough payments on your utility bill that it gets sent to collections will lower your credit score. Kind of makes you want to burn down some buildings doesn’t it?
And rent. My last rental had a special offer though: pay an extra fee every month and they’ll report your rent to the credit bureaus, raising your score through the roof.
Shitty deal, but yeah, moves like this will save you money.
Dad: “You know how when you and your gf want to learn how something works and you get books at the library and learn about it? (90s, OK?) You can learn how money works.”
Lemmy: NOAAWW! Want money want credit! No learn!
Reminds me of a coworker telling me overtime is bullshit because they charge you more taxes and you actually make less money.
Oh honey. That’s why you’ll never have more money.
If you don’t pay me extra money, I’ll make your life hard. Sounds like extortion to me.
You can report your own rent to the credit bureaus. Hell I report the rent I paided to family in cash and they accepted it and it rose my credit score. You just have to show reoccurring costs and bank statements.
Careful, that’ll lower your score
There’s some that have now adapted their policies to include bill payments
Paying your utility bills on time for your whole life will not raise your credit score one point.
FICO Credit scores measure exactly one thing: How good are you at regularly paying on debt over time? Thats it.
Utility bills are generated and cleared every month (assuming you pay). If you got in a financial jam, you could probably lower how much HVAC you use or lower your water usage while times were tight. You can’t do that on installment loans. The full loan payment is due every month. Utility bills are not a great measure of the ability to regularly pay on debt over time, which is what FICO scores measure.
That one actually makes sense to me. A utility bill isn’t credit, it’s a different debt, so paying it when you’re supposed to doesn’t demonstrate responsible use of credit. On the other hand, if you can’t pay off any sort of debt on time, you probably aren’t a good risk for loaning money to.
Also, it’s the kind of payment you cannot miss. I’m fucking off my CC bills ATM because I’m unemployed, cannot pay. I have to scrounge the power, roof and water bills.
Absolutely. I could candidate some buildings in particular. They have some sort of pedo brand.
Credit scores are used to tell companies how much they can earn on lending you money.
Paying back quickly reduces the amount they can earn, lowering your credit score.
Not paying it back obviously lowers the score.
The way I understand it, to raise your credit score you need to slowly pay back your loans, so you pay back maximum interest.
Note however that I am just a cynical IT guy in Sweden with zero actual exposure to US/UK style credit scores, and that I may be talking out of my ass.
The way I understand it, to raise your credit score you need to slowly pay back your loans, so you pay back maximum interest.
I got an 800 credit score by just using credit cards and paying the balance each month. Lenders made literally no money on me.
Your ass is speaking truth
There must be something else to it. I’ve never paid any interest on my credit cards and I paid off my mortgage early; by your logic I should have a low credit score, but it’s actually in the “Excellent” range.
Yeah paying back early doesn’t affect it as far as I can tell. Lenders just want to know if you’ll leave them in the lurch or not. If you pay back early that just means they can reinvest the cash sooner.
You have great interest paying potential because of your reliable handling of finances, so your score is high to make it easy for you to take on a lot of debt down the road.
In another comment, someone mentioned that it’s not just repayment of interest that profits credit card companies.
Even if you pay all debts monthly before interest can compound, the CC companies still charge processing fees to merchants on a per-transaction basis (which merchants either pass directly to consumers or indirectly through higher prices). They still get their cut, even if you don’t see it on a line item.Recently I had house work done. The contractor offered to charge me 5% less if I paid with cash or check instead of credit card.
Well the back need some safe bets as a baseline.
There must be something else to it.
Massive understatement—it’d be more accurate to say they’re completely wrong, lol.
Credit scores are used to tell companies how much they can earn on lending you money.
This is demonstrably bullshit.
Someone who maxes out a credit card, and then only pays minimum payments, and always makes them late, is, via interest accruing and late payment fees, making the lender basically the maximum amount of profit possible. And yet doing this will result in a garbage credit score, because using every penny of your credit limit is very detrimental to your credit score, and not making payments on time is extremely detrimental to your credit score.
Meanwhile, take me, someone who never pays a cent of interest, because he pays off his card every statement cycle (and on time, naturally), and because of card rewards, I’m the one profiting, the lender is literally the one paying me, and ‘yet’, my credit score is in the 800s.
So how do you reconcile that with the assertion quoted above? It’s very hard to understand how anyone can arrive at the conclusion you did, while also knowing, at least (as I assume you do), that late payments simultaneously hurt your credit score and increase profit for the lender, just as one example.
Paying back quickly reduces the amount they can earn, lowering your credit score.
Straight-up
liefalse.The way I understand it, to raise your credit score you need to slowly pay back your loans, so you pay back maximum interest.
You don’t understand it.
There’s also an element of whether or not the lendee can reliably make payments. Always having late fees doesn’t show that you’re able to reliably make companies money. And when you’re making payments on time without fees, they still get money from the fees they charge the business. So using and paying back is still good for them. It’s still all about the money, because it always is in the US.
Paying back quickly reduces the amount they can earn, lowering your credit score.Straight-up lie.
No, it doesn’t fit the definition of a lie, I didn’t know any better, so it was ignorance, not a lie, it would be nice if you could edit and correct this line.
The way I understand it, to raise your credit score you need to slowly pay back your loans, so you pay back maximum interest.You don’t understand it.
I wholeheartedly agree with you there.
Overall you do seem to know the subject better than me, so I will mostly defere to your judgement (apart from the thing about me lying).
EDIT: Thanks for the edit! (:
I always pay my loans back on time and every now and then the bank rise my credit limit. I think it’s because I also have a bank account with them and they can see I have the money ready to go. I don’t make much money for them, but I do make a consistent amount and the banks like that too.
Paying back a loan quickly will not lower your credit score. If you have a line of credit that closes as soon as you pay off a loan (eg a car loan) your score can go down if it changes your utilization rate (how much you could take out in loans vs. how much you have taken out) but paying off a loan early won’t impact your score.
You can look up what things are factored into a consumer credit score. You can see for yourself that early payments are not part of the formula.
You are entirely incorrect. The credit card company makes most of their money from the fees paid by the merchant. They make money when you, the customer, spend money because the merchant gives a chunk of it to them, usually with an additional flat fee. (Different merchants and card processors have different payment structures. A grocery store is more likely to pay a much higher fixed daily fee to avoid unpredictable transaction fees on small purchases)
They don’t lower your score if you pay back early. People get confused because they see their score drop after going from $10k credit card limit with $800 in monthly usage paid on time every time and a $500 balance on a $25k car loan that’s been paid on time every month to just the credit card. The reason it went down is that the number of regular timely payments went down, which means fewer trust signals, and credit utilization went up. (3% to 8%). It doesn’t however snap down as though you hadn’t just made a bunch of good payments, it just doesn’t boost when you’re done.
The credit card company makes the most money when you make a huge number of modest purchases and then immediately pay them back. When you have credit card debt their money is sitting in the merchants account. They want to minimize the time they don’t have their money so they charge you based on the risk that you never pay them back, after a grace period. (You have usually a month before any interest acrues).
It’s why as you get better credit scores the credit card company starts offering you increasing incentives to buy things. Bonus cash back on purchases at places that tend to be frequent, smaller purchases without bulk processing rates and so one. They’ll refund you on purchases in a dispute with the merchant and then figure out the merchant dispute independently (usually by just dropping it because they don’t care about $124.99 in potentially substandard curtains or whatever they just want the customer to keep buying curtains and the merchant to keep thinking it’s a net positive). You’re a walking $0.25 + 3.0% per purchase. Making you regret spending money is the last thing they want.Hmm, I don’t think so. I’m in my 60s and I’ve always paid my credit cards in full each month when they’re due. Until very recently, I did have a mortgage and paid the regular payment (with occasional extra payments for principle), do they did make money off of me there. My credit rating has pretty much always been at or near the highest it can be.
There are a lot of bad answers or misunderstandings about credit scores in this thread.
FICO Credit scores measure exactly one thing: How good are you at regularly paying on debt over time? Thats it.
There are some other companies that take your FICO score and make their own determinations from it, but those are not the intended purpose of a FICO score.
ANON is also saying “x raises” or “y lowers” but he’s missing one other part. Some of those raises and lowers are temporary meaning for a couple of months only, and those don’t have years long impacts.
Most of the big moving pieces are publicly published right on the FICO website too, so you don’t have to guess:
So lets look at ANONs complaints through the lens of what FICO scores address:
Using credit lowers your score
I’m assuming ANON means “using a portion of an already established credit line.” We can see in the chart that this would increase the red segment of the FICO score. FICO assumes the closer you get to your maximum credit availability, the more you’re being squeezed financially reducing your ability to pay on all of your debts. From a lender’s perspective, if your debts are piling up, then lending you more is a higher risk.
Not using credit lowers your score
If ANON means “using zero credit” then, yes, ANON wouldn’t have a recent history of paying on debt then the Payment History section of the graph would be thin or empty. From a lender’s perspective, if you haven’t paid on any debt in the last 6 months, how do they know you still have the ability to do so if you want credit right now?
Paying back late lowers your score
Absolutely! Its violating the very purpose FICO is made to measure: How good are you at regularly paying on debt over time?
Paying back early lowers your score
This one is a yes or no depending on what scenario ANON is talking about. Paying back a credit card early DOES NOT lower your score. In fact, it would likely RAISE your score. Paying back an installment loan, lets say for a car, early can lower your score, but not because its early, but because the load will disappear. Without a loan to pay on, you will have less recent history of paying on an installment loan for a car, and 6 months from now a lender may not know if you still have the ability to do so, so you score falls.
Even checking your score lowers your score.
ANON checking ANONs score DOES NOT lower your score. ANON allowing a lender to do a hard pull check does lower the score, but only a small amount 10-20 points and this is temporary about a month or two. Further, do several hard pulls at once, they don’t each lower by 10 or 20 points. If you do the pulls close together (within a week or two) it will be only the temporary lowering for a month or two. From a lender’s perspective if you’re reaching out for new lines of credit, it means you’re indicating you’re about to take on more debt which could affect your ability to pay on further new debts.
Taking out loans lowers your score
Temporarily, yes, but over time this can grow your score if its in a different loan type or length.
Paying back loans lowers your score
Yes and no, circumstances depending. If you pay back that one loan type lets say a car loan, and you have have no other installment loans, then you will have no more recent history of paying on any installment loans. However, if you have a mortgage which is another type of installment loan, you’ll take no hit for paying back the car loan as you will continue to have a recent payment history of paying on installment loans. You could take a hit because a nearly paid off loan looks good for the “Amounts owed” component of the score, but you could use a trick like getting a credit card of the same credit line (and not charge anything on it) to avoid that if you really need to.
Not taking out loans lowers your score
Not quite true. Having no recent payment history means a lower score, but it you already have some type of loan or credit you pay on every month, not taking out more loans will not hurt your score.
One final thought I really really want to dispel: YOUR FICO SCORE IS NOT INCREASED BY PAYING INTEREST ON CREDIT CARD DEBT!
Try everything you can to avoid carrying credit card debt into next month. Interest rates are crazy high and it does nothing to help you. If you put a purchase on a credit card, make sure to pay the full statement balance every month. If you do this, you’ll pay zero interest on any credit card purchases.
tldr, debt is a trap. only when you accept it’s a trap does it become a tool
if you want/need more $…learn the value of your labor.
For the vast majority of people the only debt they should ever get is a house.
The average person does not have to financial means to pay for a car or school without loans.
A car is absolutely doable without financing l. It’s a poverty trap to finance a car. What you can’t do is have a brand new car.
Same with phones. Buy a second-hand flagship from a couple of years ago (eg pixel 8), and use a pre-paid plan.
It’s not just a few hundred dollars saved on the phone, it’s also a few hundred per year on less overpriced contracts.
Prepaid plans have to be more competitively priced because you can switch at will.
I buy all my phones off eBay from reputable resellers. There are plenty that make a living at refurbishing phones, rate each one on a scale, post pics of the phone you will receive. I pay around $120 for mine, $180 if it’s a bangin’ deal and I really want that unit.
it’s fine to finance a car you can afford. it may even be benefincial. i can take aout a 20K loan at a near 0 apr, i can take that 20K and invest it and get a return on it. which is better than dumping it all at once into a depreciating asset.
the problem is that people fiance cars they can’t afford. like 50K gas guzzlers with massive maintenance bills
Having 20k plus the cash flow to pay a 20k loan is a totally different scenario than buying a car for cash. If you need that 20k to pay the 333/month, it’s stupid to trust the market isn’t going to go down, and simple savings would net you maybe $500.
the market hasnt’ gone down in like 15 years dude. the government will prop it up if it does go down.
It used to be, but these days the average person can barely afford groceries without a loan.
- have no car
- cannot work
- take loan
- buy car
- can go to work (and pay for car)
How to skip steps 2-4?
Pay cash for a car that runs. You aren’t getting a loan without income in the first place.
That is what I have done, I don’t like that debt either and some cunt at the bank getting 2/3rds of my housing expenses is only slightly better than a wanker of a landlord getting all of it.
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nah, no lender gives a fuck about your financial situation, certainly not in america. bankstreet turned boom and bust investing into an science, nothing has changed there.
for the overwhelming majority of people all debt is a trap, for everyone else…it’s still a trap, just a useful one.
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They are right, its a trap.
If the system were set up in a way that you could actually get to the point where those “big things” were not always required, on an individual basis, it wpuld not be.
But that isn’t the world we live in. We live in one where everything needs to keep raising in cost until there is nonescape from the debt requirement for anyone. And the squeeze will happen until everyone becomes a part of the trap.
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Thank you, holy shit, I get so frustrated seeing the most obviously-disproven misconceptions flying around even communities that purport to be savvy, lol.
Though one thing you didn’t mention that I think always should be: re credit card, don’t pay SO early that the agencies never see that you borrowed in the first place. In other words, wait until at least your statement date to pay your card (off, ideally). It’s your statement balance that gets reported, so if you pay before the statement cycle ends, the agencies won’t even know that the transaction(s) happened at all. Pay the card off anytime between your statement hitting, and your due date, and you’re golden, credit score improves, and you accrue no interest.
I’m pretty sure they see everything, but the way it’s chunked up can create artifacts. Balances are tabulated monthly, but they also see your payments. A higher balance means higher utilization which lowers your score. Paying early counts as a history of on time payment and lower utilization, which is good for your score.
https://www.chase.com/personal/credit-cards/education/basics/should-you-pay-off-credit-card-early
Excellent summary, and thank you for the bold section on paying credit card interest. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard that myth.
Great write-up, thanks!
Having said that, it’s hard not to feel that these rules have been semi purposefully left vague so that people take the wrong actions that will cost them extra money
To add on-top of that, I feel like this system, and most systems around this, are all setup to work great for the rich and the “providers” and just plain less good for us. It’s almost like a casino in that the house always wins
Having said that, it’s hard not to feel that these rules have been semi purposefully left vague so that people take the wrong actions that will cost them extra money
This sounds like perhaps you believe this is an intentionally convoluted process designed to trap people. Like it is a set of financial gymnastics that borrowers must learn and perform before getting a loan.
I don’t think thats the case or the origin. I think its much more likely that, prior to FICO scores, lenders went looking at people that successfully pay on debt and then started analyzing those borrowers choices. They found those that were successfully followed a set of behaviors, and then Fair Isaac (the company behind FICO) created a FICO score (there are actually a whole bunch of different FICO scores) baking in those behaviors.
I will admit that companies that have no business using credit scores are now using them for various other aspects of life, but that wasn’t the intent for FICO scores to begin with from the outset.
To add on-top of that, I feel like this system, and most systems around this, are all setup to work great for the rich and the “providers” and just plain less good for us. It’s almost like a casino in that the house always wins
The truly rich likely don’t have to deal with FICO scores as the lending products they’re using are asset based anyway. I will say that this system is NOT designed to help borrowers. Its not meant to hurt them, but its certainly to let lenders know who has a better chance of servicing a loan or not.
I mean, the rule is to not carry a balance, make payments on time, and don’t borrow more than you can pay back. They aren’t very cagey about those rules. The exact ways particular actions impact your score isn’t relevant to the best practices.
There’s a lot wrong with the credit industry, but being upfront about payment practices really isn’t a problem.
One weird thing you missed is the “length of credit” though. Let’s say you get your first credit card somewhere as a kid, and now you’re 40 and haven’t had anything else. Suddenly, that bank wants you to pay a monthly fee to keep your account open. If you get a new credit card somewhere else, and cancel your kid-card, your score is going to get hit quite a bit, no?
If you did it “correct”, you’d have 10+ different cards lying in a drawer at home to tons of different credit agencies.
It’s all an insane game that you have to play, despite the fact that it can usually be played “for free”.
Only the Uber wealthy credit cards really have annual fees. For everything else they just expect a minium balance of like 20 bucks. My bank only wants 12.50 in a savings acct and there’s no fee for checking or saving.
If your checking acct or credit card has an annual fee and it’s not an absurdly high end amex or some shit then it’s likely a predatory acct and not a real bank or credit union.
I kept my kid card open for exactly this reason, but thankfully there were no fees involved. The issuer cancelled the card after two years worth of not using it though :(
because that’s weird. that’s not a situation most people would have.
the card they got as a kid would be a shitty card with a very high APR. any smart person would dump it and replace it with a better card.
long term credit card keeping also isn’t that huge of an impact on your score. when i got to 10+ years on an account, it bumped it up by 10 points.
it’s not an insane game. you clearly have no experience with it. it’s mundane and boring stuff that most of us never ever think about outside of weirdos who are trying to maximize their score or people who churn cards for the 0 apr rates.
shitty card with a very high APR
Which doesn’t matter if you pay it off in full each month ;)
yeah, that’s how you build credit.
but a lot of people don’t use credit that way. they take out personal loads, load up cc, and make minimal payments. and wonder why they are broke and start complaining they were ‘entrapped’
Also worth mentioning: what’s the alternative?
If there are no credit scores but there are still loans, the banks / entities making the loans have no real way to know if their loan is going to be paid back. Because of that, the loans are a lot more risky. What happens when a loan is riskier? The interest rate is higher, or people are just outright rejected.
Either or, depending on the risk tolerance of your lender.
A low limit credit card with 0 interest if you pay off in full before it’s due is a great way to build your credit score.
Just buy stuff on it you’d normally buy without credit, then pay it off ASAP. And you’ll build a reliable reputation as someone who can handle credit. Just don’t spend more than you can pay off by the time it’s due.
the loans are a lot more risky. What happens when a loan is riskier? The interest rate is higher, or people are just outright rejected.
And the likelihood is that the people who are outright rejected will follow unfortunate patterns.
Yes, but why is this game even required?
My god, I want to write some things up but you NAILED it.
One thing I’ll back you on, one’s credit score can bounce in a month or three. No big deal. Learn how it works, work the system.
In other words, Anon is right on every point? Honestly, I thought some were exhaggerations. But thanks for confirming each and every.
Anon is actually pretty far off.
Hes right in the same sense that saying the sky is blue is technically correct. If you ignore the countless other colors it can be.
I’m Australian, and this post prompted me to research the US Social Credit system. The score can determine whether or not you’re accepted for home rentals, and even determine whether or not you qualify for medical treatments
You need to engage in having debt and credit in order to appease the score.
I bought an apartment recently, and I’ve never had a credit card or debt of any variety. When I was younger my bank would dip into negatives or reject a payment fairly regularly. In the US that could probably cost me a place to live.
And apparently the entire credit score is built up and perpetrated by these massive corporations? Like Credit Score is not even anything to do with the government, and yet it has such a pervasive effect on people’s lives and their behavior.
It’s straight up creepy. Dystopian vibes. How do Americans tolerate this?
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because you deeply misunderstand it.
it basically lets lenders know if you have a history of paying back your loans or not.
it’s that simple. and in the USA medical treatment often requires loans, just like buying a house or car does.
missing a single payment does little to nothing to your score. missing several payments, and defaulting, tanks it.
Then why do you need to engage in having debt and using credit cards to have a good score? If having no credit score is nearly as bad as having a bad credit score then something is wrong.
when i hire someone for a job, how do I know they have experience without being able to verify they have held previous employment in a similar position?
the point of the system is to show you have experience and you pay back your debts. it’s not that anything more than that.
a lender doesn’t want to give someone a big loan if they have no experience. just like i won’t hire you for a senior staff position fresh out of college. those things take like a decade or more to develop.
my credit score at 18 was like 500. and my credit limit was $250. now it’s 830, because I’ve paid back all my debts in a timely manner and have access and have six figures in credit available to me.
if you want a a good credit score, go take out a card, make small payments with it, and pay them back.
it’s not a conspiracy anymore than the fact it takes years to get promoted at a job.
How do Americans tolerate this?
Brainwashing. Americans don’t realize they live in a Dystopian shithole where, since the 80s, the rules are made by the rich to keep the common person down.
We’re coming to the end game of this now.
First off, it’s not a social credit score, it’s a financial credit score, we’re not talking about the system China has for it’s citizens.
As with many of these deep dives on Americanisms, what you’ve found is generally worst case scenarios and also not universally applicable. Some states have restrictions on what your credit score can be used for and how it can impact you, car insurance and rentals being a prime example.
Also, by simply having a credit card (and not using it!) and not having any lapsed debts (collections or reported unpaid bills) you will easily have a score in the mid to high 700s. If you carry a balance month to month but regularly make your minimum payments you will have a credit score in the low to mid 700s. Hell. my wife had 5 bills in collection and still had a 650 before I met her.
As far as credit score applicability, it’s often referenced by businesses as a measure of risk. If you have a 650 instead of a 750 your car insurance might be higher because your risk of payment is higher, but we’re only talking about 10-15% more per year (US south east). Same with with rental, if you have a bunch of bills in collection or default your score will be bad, but a rental provider will be less willing to provide you service if you have a history of not paying your bills. You should still be able to find a place to live, but it will likely be more limited (for example if you have a 400, but not if you have something like a 650) or you may have a larger security deposit.
Overall your credit score likely won’t be an issue 95% of the time, but if you habitually don’t pay your bills then your score will go down and businesses that check your score won’t want to do business with you. I can’t make this clear enough, you have to be deliberate in your actions if you want your score to be low enough to cause a problem. My wife had $15k in student loans, $10k in credit card debt, and 5 unpaid bills that had been sent to collections and she still was in the 600s. The score system exists for a reason, I would argue that it should be a bit more forgiving, but the reason it exists is fair.
Non US citizens might have trouble relating to this, but people in the US take blatant advantage of systems a lot of times. I have a coworker that moved for a new job, but he didn’t want to sell his house because he got it at a good rate and time. He listed his house for a decent rate and his first tenant stopped paying after the second month. He waited until 4 months hadn’t been paid to take them to court and it took another 6 months to have them removed. Just before they were going to be escorted out by the sheriff they paid him the entire back rent in cash to try to prevent the eviction (they had the money the whole time!) After they were evicted he reached out to the local municipality for the water account and they found out the tenant had bypassed the water meter (basically they were stealing). The municipality then said he had to pay to fix the bypass, penalized him for the stolen utilities, and said that for any future tenants he would have to keep the account in his name rather than having the tenants file it.
American credit score systems suck, but they are generally fair and they prove themselves necessary because a certain percentage of Americans seem to have fundamental problems with following common and decent rules of this world.
I just read an article the other day that said Gen Z has the highest rate of credit card fraud ever seen in US history. As a group they just don’t see any issue with ordering something online and then saying it never arrived and reversing the charges. I’m all for saying fuck the system and down with corporate interests, but it’s hard to have a functional modern society that casually commits fraud and theft.
Easy. It’s a scam to screw over anyone they feel like.
It stopped being a can the applicant afford their current outgoings and afford this loan type system a loooong time ago. Now it’s a noose round the neck of anyone that has ever lost a job and missed a couple of payments or got screwed over by a company changing billing software. The number means nothing, I’m sure on some kind of grading curve it averages out but so would throwing darts at a board and assigning scores that way.
The rich fail up and everyone else has to play by the rules or get fucked over.
/Rant over
It was never a system that existed to just verify the ability to get a loan. Banks were the ones who did that.
The credit score was always a measure of how individuals took on an paid off debt in a way that the creditors wanted for maximum profits. That’s why it wasn’t something individuals even had access to until they came up with a way to have people interested enough that they would pay for the privilege of being able to see their personal debt monkey score.
It has always been a shit system for the average person.
The credit score was always a measure of how individuals took on an paid off debt in a way that the creditors wanted for maximum profits.
This is demonstrably bullshit.
Someone who maxes out a credit card, and then only pays minimum payments, and always makes them late, is, via interest accruing and late payment fees, making the lender basically the maximum amount of profit possible. And yet doing this will result in a garbage credit score, because using every penny of your credit limit is very detrimental to your credit score, and not making payments on time is extremely detrimental to your credit score.
Meanwhile, take me, someone who never pays a cent of interest, because he pays off his card every statement cycle (and on time, naturally), and because of card rewards, I’m the one profiting, the lender is literally the one paying me, and ‘yet’, my credit score is in the 800s.
So how do you reconcile that with your assumed truth quoted above? It’s very hard to understand how anyone can arrive at the conclusion you did, while also knowing (as I assume you do) that late payments simultaneously hurt your credit score and increase profit for the lender, just as one example.
The exact same as the Chinese “social credit” system that people whine about, except this one is capitalism based, so it’s ok.
many different names for the same but different system that is all about control and sugation of the masses.
Chuck it onto the stinking pile of insurance and privatized healthcare.
Mine doesn’t go down when I call the government a bunch of cunts.
And the Chinese one still goes down if you’re poor.
100% correct.
Your government would just imprison you and/or deport you instead.
How do you think “social credit” would be handled if the US were a socialist/communist country?
1:1 same as credit score - in the worst possible way
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Credit score bad. Next.
I started paying cash for everything about 30 years ago. Haven’t needed my credit score since so I froze my credit score access. There have been no downsides.
Credit score bad. Next.
Nah, it’s good for me to know the risk before I lend to someone. Only bad borrowers are against their reputation re repayment history not being public.
Without credit scores, nepotism and bigotry are what decides who gets loans, since lenders will have nothing but ‘vibes’ to go off of. No thanks.
Huh?
In my country there’s debt registries (that you can only be put into when you’re late enough on a payment) and lenders will usually ask you for proof of income and list of obligations, or account statements for the last 6 months, to determine if you’re capable of paying back.
The disadvantage is, they’ll see your account statements. The advantage is, you don’t have to have a credit card, or any sort of debt, to build credit. You don’t need credit history. If your income is high enough and your expenses are noticeably lower than your income, and you don’t have an outstanding debt registry entry, you’re eligible for a loan.
Our mortgage delinquency rates are lower than in the US. And home ownership rates are pretty high so it seems people are getting mortgages no problem
In my country there’s debt registries (that you can only be put into when you’re late enough on a payment) and lenders will usually ask you for proof of income and list of obligations, or account statements for the last 6 months, to determine if you’re capable of paying back.
So you have a system that’s only different than the US’s in the minutia—fundamentally, it’s still lenders using information from the to-be borrower’s past to try and determine how risky it is to lend to them.
Which is what the person I was replying to is saying is a bad thing for lenders to have access to. Your country’s debt registries are functionally equivalent to negative marks on a US credit report, so I think you’re actually more on my ‘side’ here than the person I replied to.
If your income is high enough and your expenses are noticeably lower than your income, and you don’t have an outstanding debt registry entry, you’re eligible for a loan.
This doesn’t protect lenders from people who are plenty capable of handling a debt with the income they have, but don’t, because they’re irresponsible with that income. But that may be more of an issue in the US than in your country overall, culturally.
Our mortgage delinquency rates are lower than in the US.
What’s your rate, if you don’t want to reveal your country of residence directly? I’m curious of the gap, and also want to make sure you’re not using figures from around the 2008 scandal (primarily caused by a bunch of lenders giving mortgages to people who shouldn’t have qualified); It’s 1.78% in the US presently.
And home ownership rates are pretty high
Define “pretty high”, so I can get a better idea; it’s 65% in the US presently, for reference.
If you’ve never fallen behind, or it’s been over 5 years since you paid off your delinquent debts, there’s no record. There’s no need to play around for a good credit score.
The country is Estonia. Mortgage delinquency rates are 0.17% over 60 days late as of last year.
Home ownership rate is about 80% and a lot of those are mortgaged.
There are good reasons to avoid delinquency. The bailiffs can get your bank accounts even in other EU countries arrested if you keep refusing to pay. Also the debt registry system is fairly effective. You won’t be getting any major credit for at least 5 years once you’re in on it.
Banks are also willing to work with people on alternative payment schedules if they get in trouble. I’d wager that saves everyone involved some money and time too.
If you’ve never fallen behind, or it’s been over 5 years since you paid off your delinquent debts, there’s no record.
It’s kind of similar in the US, negative things are gone 7 years later, regardless of whether they were resolved.
The country is Estonia. Mortgage delinquency rates are 0.17% over 60 days late as of last year. Home ownership rate is about 80% and a lot of those are mortgaged.
I’m seeing about 20% of homeowners having mortgages in Estonia, I wouldn’t call 1 in 5 a lot. It’s more like 60% in the US.
Also reading up on this, it looks like some post Soviet-era policies gave a lot of people the ability to buy their homes outright for a fraction of the cost in the 90s, so it seems a lot of what you’re saying is the result of inertia from that. From what I read, it also seems Estonians are more likely than Americans to ‘live within their means’ as well, being much more averse in general to going into debt. That’s definitely going to contribute to that low delinquency rate.
There are good reasons to avoid delinquency. The bailiffs can get your bank accounts even in other EU countries arrested if you keep refusing to pay. Also the debt registry system is fairly effective. You won’t be getting any major credit for at least 5 years once you’re in on it.
This all sounds pretty similar to how it is in the US.
Banks are also willing to work with people on alternative payment schedules if they get in trouble. I’d wager that saves everyone involved some money and time too.
This is also true in the US.
Overall, from what I’m seeing, I don’t think any of the significant differences you’ve mentioned between Estonia and the US can be chalked up to how our credit score system works versus how it is there—you honestly describe a very similar system, and there are much more obvious reasons for the differences that I saw in the bit of research I did.
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Credit score = milkability score.
I follow the old-fashioned idea of buying things with money I have, debit instead of credit.
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Never owned a credit card, never will
“But how will you raise your credit score without accruing debt?”
I’d rather fucking die than spend my time participating in a system which wants to grade my Credit Utilization Normalization Tier (CUNT).
In my area it can be very difficult to get an apartment unless you or someone you’re renting with has a decent score. Participating in this bullshit isn’t a choice for some people.
I mean, good for you, but most people will need to go into debt for something at some point in their life.
Most people, no. Need, no. Many will want to, for various reasons, yes.
(Unless China and India come up with some sort of mandatory debt. Then yes all the way.)
Ok sure, I guess I don’t “need” anything apart from food and water and oxygen. What I really meant was, they will need to go into debt to finance the life they want to live, which for most people includes going to college and buying some type of property (not to mention other things like starting a business, supporting relatives, etc)
It’s all a scam, man. Money’s just pretend. I converted all my cash to radishes. At least when the economy goes into a death spiral I’ll still have radishes.
Im considering it as well. but the question is before I begin would be that a diet of only radishes everyday can prevent scurvy, if so im all aboard.
You can trade me some of your radishes for some of my sweet potatoes.
Real animal crossing strategies
Makes sense when you learn and realize that this is the new way of red lining people. Particularly POC who are less likely to be able to build credit because of poverty.
A few pieces of history here
- The credit system didn’t exist until around 1989.
- Back then, your “trustworthiness” was vague. So if you were black in America walking into a bank, they can easily reject you. And they’d pass this information around like “So-and-so was rejected because
he was blackwe at the Ku Klux bank believe he is untrustworthy” so now banks all over the US has that information and will auto reject you. - In 1970s, they push laws to deny credit based on gender, religion, race. You know, because women couldn’t have bank accounts.
So, the credit system fixed a few problems.
Now, there’s a few other issues. Credit score + education + zip code easily tells people more about you. Lots of data loopholes.
Im disgusted by the credit score system for the points you laid out. And it’s a imperfect system that did solve some big problems.
It changed but is still used to affect people who used to be redlined before that was made illegal. As for the laws passed in the 70s, yeah, everybody obeys those all the time don’t they?
Yep! Credit scores work for the people they’re supposed to: wealthy folks who give their kids $$$ at 18, add them as an authorized user on their own cards, etc. All the one-up stuff poor people can’t afford. This is just a numerical way of saying “you’re poor go to hell.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but being an authorized user doesn’t improve your credit score
Yes it can improve their scores if the main user keeps it in good standing. It can have a negative impact if the main user doesn’t make payments on time, maxes it out, etc.
It might not be a blanket rule, but if, as an authorized user, you see the line of credit on your credit report it is impacting it.
I hqd a score of 800 after about 8 years starting from a $200 secured card I got after moving states with my gf and living our lives working at restaurants.
You don’t have to be rich to get a good score, it’s about habits and debt load.
My family was not wealthy but they helped me open a card at 18, which I used instead of debit payments and just paid off in full.
Being poor isn’t an excuse for being stupid.
Ridiculous, you can have a fantastic credit score just by using a credit card in place of when you’d otherwise use cash, then just pay the card off each month (which you should be able to do with no problem if you didn’t borrow more than you had in cash) no later than the due date.
No interest accrued, credit score over 800. Easy.
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I’m sure I’ll get down voted to holy hell for saying this, but I’ve always appreciated that the rules are pretty transparent and it was easy for me to rack up a great credit score even before I had a decent income. To me it always felt like an open book test.
I think that’s misleading - taking out loans and paying them back is the most well known way of raising a credit score. I don’t see why the opposite would be true.
Supposedly some people actually do this, when they can afford to, because they see the boost to their credit score as worth the actual lost cash in interest. From what I gather, credit score helps you to attain more favourable mortgages or other loans, which helps when you make big purchases like cars or if you run a small business.
Example from my own life:
spoiler
The first time i took out a student loan [UK] I left the course after about 2 weeks and repaid it all back because Student Finance England - a private entity that supposedly operates on behalf of the government - was hassling me to return the money straight away. Ironically, i didn’t need to do that, and there wasn’t much benefit to doing so. But my credit score is abnormally high compared to other peoples’ and i think that’s why.
One arguably unjust part about credit scores is that the actions of people related to you, or simply sharing the same surname as you, can affect it! E.G i have heard that a friend-of-a-friend’s dad took out too many loans and now their credit score suffers.
Seems like a medieval system to me. People joke that it’s the capitalist approach to a “social credit score,” and I have to agree.
Anyway if it’s true that the actions of other people can affect your credit score, it seems like the number is nothing more than a “how much do bankers like you” score. I presume a bankers immediate family will have higher than normal credit scores. What OP/anon perceives as the score going down for contradictory reasons are actually just his score going haywire under a combination of factors outside of his control.
taking out loans and paying them back is the most well known way of raising a credit score.
This is so much the case that many financial institutions have “credit builder loans” which are essentially a loophole for building credit, where you’re given a ‘fake loan’ that you repay, then you’re given back your payments at the end of it. Meanwhile, the credit reporting agencies see that you took out a loan and faithfully repaid it, so your credit score goes up.
One arguably unjust part about credit scores is that the actions of people related to you, or simply sharing the same surname as you, can affect it! E.G i have heard that a friend-of-a-friend’s dad took out too many loans and now their credit score suffers.
It doesn’t work that way, at all. Credit scores are individual. Either that person is mistaken, or they were a co-signer on one or more of those loans (which makes them matter to their score also).
Anyway if it’s true that the actions of other people can affect your credit score
It’s not, they can’t.
It doesn’t work that way, at all. Credit scores are individual. Either that person is mistaken, or they were a co-signer on one or more of those loans (which makes them matter to their score also).
Thanks for fact-checking me man, I did start to think I’d got the wrong end of the stick while writing it.
To be fair, your credit score can be affected by someone else’s actions if the credit tracking agencies screw up and think you’re the same person… This is hopefully harder to happen now, but my mother and her brother had the same initials in a different order and their SSNs were different by only one number and somehow the credit bureaus messed up and it was a headache getting that untangled.
That said… Yeah, that’s absolutely not how it’s supposed to work and if it happens it’s because someone somewhere screwed up.
Now that it’s all computerized, the odds of that happening should be pretty slim, but things do still go through a human’s hands at some points of the process so it’s still not impossible.
One arguably unjust part about credit scores is that the actions of people related to you, or simply sharing the same surname as you, can affect it! E.G i have heard that a friend-of-a-friend’s dad took out too many loans and now their credit score suffers.
You’re mixing things here that led you to a wrong conclusion.
Credit scores are based upon credit events. The credit events come from your credit report which is separate from your credit score. The only things on your credit report should be your credit events. Not someone with the same name, nor someone from your family. If either of those things are on your credit report, that is and error you need to go through the paperwork process to get those removed from your credit report.
It’s an American and British affliction… This shit wasn’t even a thing in France and then I moved to the UK and people talk about “credit scores” and willingly going into debt to pay it off, huhhhhhh 🙄
Most of these points are myths, but as long as it’s funny, right?
…or the OP believes the myths, isn’t trying to be funny, and is legitimately confused?
most of the comments on this thread are paranoid ramblings of ignorant people who think the credit system is a conspiracy against them.
The trick is to not give a shit about credit scores, of course I don’t live in the US which helps.
The problem is, usually people and services that one uses, DO give a shit about your score. Unless you live off grid (not in the energy sense, but as a member of society) in the wilderness, you will have to deal with It, unfortunately.
I have never had a problem with completely ignoring it my whole life. Didn’t matter to rent a room, didn’t matter to buy a house. Never plan on borrowing money for anything other than buying a house either. I would rather go without - and often have. Never learnt to drive because I couldn’t afford it and outright refused to take a loan to do so. My bike works well enough instead.
My bike works well enough instead.
Same here, I’ve gotten weird looks for not owning a car. But hey, at least I got a pair of nice legs I get complimented on twice a year. lol
I understand, while that can happen with some individuals, it’s not true for the vast majority of people.
I too rather go without this shitty system, but that’s not how it goes unfortunately, got denied a house financing twice because of the low score (got some debts a década ago and the score never went back up), I managed to use a friend’s name for financing, then later I transfered it to my name, many loops and roundabouts.
Unless you live off grid
It’s quite easy to pay cash for stuff and forget that credit cards and credit scores exist, even when living in a big city.
