Credit
Buy Now Pay Later and What It Does to Your Credit Score
Pay in four plans now show up in credit files and some scores. How reporting works, what a missed payment does and when the plan beats a card.
6 min read
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Credit-Report
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Credit
Secured Credit Cards and How They Turn Into Real Credit
You place a $300 cash deposit and receive a $300 credit limit. How secured cards report to credit bureaus, what features to avoid, and how to graduate to unsecured credit.
6 min read
Credit
Becoming an Authorized User to Build Credit Quickly
Becoming an authorized user on an established credit card imports account history and limits in thirty days, provided the issuing bank reports user trade-lines.
7 min read
Credit
How Long Late Payments and Collections Stay on Your Report
Late payments and collections stay on credit reports for seven years from the original delinquency date. Paying does not reset the clock under federal law.
8 min read
CreditGuide
Disputing an Error on Your Credit Report
You have a legal right to an investigation within 30 days. The letter that gets results, what to enclose, and the step where most disputes quietly fail.
7 min read
Credit
Hard vs Soft Credit Inquiries
A soft pull never touches your score. A hard pull costs most people under five points for a few months, and three mortgage applications in one fortnight count as one.
6 min read
Credit
Should You Close an Old Credit Card?
Closing it raises your utilisation the same day and shortens your average account age much later. Usually keep it. Here are the three cases where closing is the right call anyway.
7 min read
Credit
Does Checking Your Credit Score Lower It?
No. Checking your own is a soft inquiry and never affects the score. The belief comes from something true about a completely different kind of check, and that one costs under five points.
5 min read
Credit
Credit Utilisation and the Statement-Date Trick
Your card reports the statement balance, not the balance after you pay it. Moving the payment two days earlier can turn a reported 61.7% into 6.2% without changing a thing you spend.
6 min read
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CreditGuide
What Actually Moves Your Credit Score
Two of the five factors are worth 65% of the score. The other three get argued about far more than they are worth, and one of them you cannot change at all.
7 min read