• ObjectivityIncarnate@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Yes credit scores are bullshit

    They’re not. They exist for a very good reason, and are purely beneficial to people who repay what they borrow. They only ‘hurt’ people who don’t repay their debts, but only insofar as it makes it more difficult for them to take more money from people that they then also won’t pay back.

    • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      They also hurt people who are the most responsible with their credit. They ding you on your score if you don’t carry a balance on your card.

      • ObjectivityIncarnate@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        They ding you on your score if you don’t carry a balance on your card.

        This is unequivocally false. I can’t believe how pervasive this common misconception still is:

        Carrying a balance on a credit card to improve your credit score has been proven as a myth. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says paying off your credit cards in full each month is the best way to improve your credit score and maintain excellent credit for the long haul.

        Carrying a balance on your card literally can only hurt you, as the only thing the actual dollar amount of the balance impacts is utilization, in other words, ‘what percent of your total credit limit are you using’, and for that, lower is better. Plus, carrying a balance means paying interest, which is money down the drain on top of that.

        I haven’t paid a cent of interest on any of my credit cards for well over a decade; I use it for my everyday purchases, and pay it off every month—my credit score’s firmly in the 800s, and 750 is the ‘you won’t get a better rate’ threshold for 99.9% of lending.

    • Red_October@piefed.world
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      5 days ago

      That’s why my credit score went down when I paid off my student loans, right? Get the fuck outta here.

      • ObjectivityIncarnate@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        No, it didn’t. Maybe your score on Credit Karma did, but that’s because Credit Karma’s system of estimation (VantageScore I think it’s called) stops considering a loan the moment you pay it off, while the actual credit reporting agencies continue to consider it (re average age of accounts) for 10 years after closing if it was in good standing, or 7 years from ‘date of first delinquency’ if it was closed because of charge-off or something like that.

        My own average account age is less than 10 years, yet my credit score is in the 800s, even though I have no outstanding loans, I just use my credit card for everyday purchases and pay it off every month.

        So ‘get your ignorance the fuck outta here’ and open yourself to learning how things work.

        • Red_October@piefed.world
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          2 days ago

          So all available reporting says my credit score went down when I paid off my loans and has remained in this new lower state for months since, but the secret real number used to decide my fate maybe didn’t. Yeah you’re right that’s great. I feel better already.

          Get the fuck out of here with that. Credit scores are purely a value used by lenders to determine how much money can be extracted from a consumer. It goes down if you’re delinquent, it goes down it you pay things off early without racking up all the interest they wanted, it goes down if you don’t run enough of a balance on your credit cards. It doesn’t protect consumers, it barely protects lenders, it’s purely used to determine how much can be extracted from a consumer’s bank account.

          • ObjectivityIncarnate@lemmy.world
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            16 hours ago

            So all available reporting says my credit score went down when I paid off my loans and has remained in this new lower state for months since, but the secret real number used to decide my fate maybe didn’t.

            There’s no maybe. I already explained how it works. The only part of it that’s ‘secret’ is the minutia of the score tabulation, to make it harder to game. Loans closed in good standing (i.e. you paid them off) are part of your credit report for 10 years.

            Get the fuck out of here with that. Credit scores are purely a value used by lenders to determine how much money can be extracted from a consumer.

            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.

            It goes down if you’re delinquent

            As it should—the whole point of the score is to rate your reliability in repaying what you borrow.

            it goes down it you pay things off early without racking up all the interest they wanted

            False. You will never be worse off after paying a loan off early than you were before you took out the loan. Again, I haven’t paid a cent of interest on my credit cards in over a decade, and I paid off the only car loan I ever had, really early, less than a year into it.

            it goes down if you don’t run enough of a balance on your credit cards.

            Also false. Higher utilization is BAD for your credit score, not good. You’re saying literally the opposite of what’s true, do you realize that? You might want to google ‘credit score myths’ and find an article on bankrate or nerdwallet to educate yourself, you’ve been massively misled about this, honestly.

            It doesn’t protect consumers

            It gets good borrowers like me lower interest rates, and higher credit limits.

            it barely protects lenders

            Pretty sure the lenders would heavily disagree with that, lol. For very obvious reasons, anyone who’s considering lending someone money is going to be very interested in what happened the last X times that person was lent money.

            it’s purely used to determine how much can be extracted from a consumer’s bank account.

            Still false the second time.