Comment on Anon tries to understand credit scores
Sharkticon@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
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?
You can use Kikoff or CreditKarma or things like that to regularly report your paid on time bills, and that does, slowly, incrementally, increase your credit score.
Yeah its still total bullshit that that isn’t just like a pre-baked in part of the credit system, but you can do this.
Careful, that’ll lower your score
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.
There’s some that have now adapted their policies to include bill payments
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.
ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
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.
shalafi@lemmy.world 3 days ago
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.
Holytimes@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
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.