I keep gently petting the steering wheel and grinning to myself. Because car! :D
I think part of the problem with credit scores is a terminology issue. People tend to instinctively interpret them as an assessment of general financial soundness. Except that's not what they are. They're an assessment of a person's ability to reliably repay principle and interest on a debt over time. And by that metric, a person who pays off a credit card in full each month may just be good at spending within a regular budget -- which tells you they are prudent, but not whether they can manage to repay debt at a level that is inherently outside of their regular budget.
That part more or less makes sense, once explained. The black magic and spite comes in when someone carries a couple thousand in credit card debt indefinitely -- never pays it off! -- and that doesn't wreck their credit score because they keep paying regularly. Whereas someone who pays down a big debt and then goes back to not carrying any debt doesn't seem to get any brownie points for that. To which I would like to say, what the actual fuck.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-08-14 07:45 pm (UTC)I think part of the problem with credit scores is a terminology issue. People tend to instinctively interpret them as an assessment of general financial soundness. Except that's not what they are. They're an assessment of a person's ability to reliably repay principle and interest on a debt over time. And by that metric, a person who pays off a credit card in full each month may just be good at spending within a regular budget -- which tells you they are prudent, but not whether they can manage to repay debt at a level that is inherently outside of their regular budget.
That part more or less makes sense, once explained. The black magic and spite comes in when someone carries a couple thousand in credit card debt indefinitely -- never pays it off! -- and that doesn't wreck their credit score because they keep paying regularly. Whereas someone who pays down a big debt and then goes back to not carrying any debt doesn't seem to get any brownie points for that. To which I would like to say, what the actual fuck.