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[-] garretble@lemmy.world 112 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

While this is all technically correct it’s still dogshit that your score goes down when you do the thing you are supposed to do with a loan.

Your options are:

Take out a loan and pay it off: score goes down

Take out a loan and don’t pay it off/default: score goes down

[-] deweydecibel@lemmy.world 45 points 6 months ago

Remember that your credit score doesn't exist for you. It's not for your benefit. It's for the benefit of lenders, and they don't give a damn how unfair the system is.

[-] AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world 23 points 6 months ago

This is what people are missing. Credit score is a completely valid metric, but it's just a measure of how likely lenders are to make money off of you.

[-] TheBat@lemmy.world 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

What I don't get is: since she paid off her car loan, she'd have more disposal income now...? Shouldn't that increase her credit score?

[-] AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world 7 points 6 months ago

There's a mess of things that go into their formula, but as I recall one of them is actively paying on things. We had our daughter get a credit card and told her that, instead of using her ATM all the time, she should use the credit card, but pay it off every month. Doesn't cost her anything to do that, and it builds a credit rating way more than having a card with a zero balance. Doing that, they'll also end up raising your limit, which increases your rating too. Oh, and if you pay your credit bills as soon as they come due instead of just before the deadline, that also increases your rating.

[-] DrQuint@lemmy.world 4 points 6 months ago

Ah! I get it. So it's a valid metric in theory. It's shit for everyone in practice.

[-] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 13 points 6 months ago

Seriously. “I rarely take on debt, regularly save aggressively, and pay off my debts as quickly as is convenient” means I’m bad to loan to in their eyes when if you had evidence of all that as an ordinary person I’m exactly who you’d want to loan money to.

[-] garretble@lemmy.world 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

That’s how I’ve tried to be (and currently have no debt!).

When I needed to buy a car a few years ago, they gave me a terrible rate because I had a bad score. I had paid off a couple of personal loans AND all my student loans…but it’d been a few years so my credit score had dropped. So fuck me for not borrowing money every day.

I ended up doing a co-sign for a better rate. And guess what? I paid off that car loan a couple years early and got dinged on my credit just like the original post.

But I know they don’t care about any of that and are actually mad I didn’t pay the minimum for the entirety of the loan.

[-] 5ibelius9insterberg@feddit.de 2 points 6 months ago

If I would loan money to people, I want them to pay me back as soon as they can. But if I wanted to make money with loans, I'd want my customers to pay their loans as slowly as possible to put a lot of interest rates in my pocket.

[-] wildginger@lemmy.myserv.one 4 points 6 months ago

Your second option is 2 options. You dont need to default, just never finish paying it off.

[-] xenoclast@lemmy.world 10 points 6 months ago

Maybe you could just keep refinancing over and over until you're making 0.01 payments a month on 100 loans. And have a max credit score.

[-] frunch@lemmy.world 6 points 6 months ago

Real-life min/max'ing right here

[-] BarrelAgedBoredom@lemm.ee 9 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

The terms of a loan boil down to "we'll give you x, pay it back plus interest in y amount of time". How do you stretch something with a legally binding predetermined end out indefinitely without hurting your score or financial wellbeing?

[-] NegativeInf@lemmy.world 5 points 6 months ago

Take out a personal loan for the balance?

[-] BarrelAgedBoredom@lemm.ee 4 points 6 months ago

Isn't that just kind of burning money at that point, i.e. harming your financial wellbeing? Also, aren't personal loans seen as "bad" for credit score purposes? I had to take one out a few years back and my score dropped like 45 points within the week

this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2024
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