this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2025
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There are a lot of bad answers or misunderstandings about credit scores in this thread.
FICO Credit scores measure exactly one thing: How good are you at regularly paying on debt over time? Thats it.
There are some other companies that take your FICO score and make their own determinations from it, but those are not the intended purpose of a FICO score.
ANON is also saying "x raises" or "y lowers" but he's missing one other part. Some of those raises and lowers are temporary meaning for a couple of months only, and those don't have years long impacts.
Most of the big moving pieces are publicly published right on the FICO website too, so you don't have to guess:
source
So lets look at ANONs complaints through the lens of what FICO scores address:
I'm assuming ANON means "using a portion of an already established credit line." We can see in the chart that this would increase the red segment of the FICO score. FICO assumes the closer you get to your maximum credit availability, the more you're being squeezed financially reducing your ability to pay on all of your debts. From a lender's perspective, if your debts are piling up, then lending you more is a higher risk.
If ANON means "using zero credit" then, yes, ANON wouldn't have a recent history of paying on debt then the Payment History section of the graph would be thin or empty. From a lender's perspective, if you haven't paid on any debt in the last 6 months, how do they know you still have the ability to do so if you want credit right now?
Absolutely! Its violating the very purpose FICO is made to measure: How good are you at regularly paying on debt over time?
This one is a yes or no depending on what scenario ANON is talking about. Paying back a credit card early DOES NOT lower your score. In fact, it would likely RAISE your score. Paying back an installment loan, lets say for a car, early can lower your score, but not because its early, but because the load will disappear. Without a loan to pay on, you will have less recent history of paying on an installment loan for a car, and 6 months from now a lender may not know if you still have the ability to do so, so you score falls.
ANON checking ANONs score DOES NOT lower your score. ANON allowing a lender to do a hard pull check does lower the score, but only a small amount 10-20 points and this is temporary about a month or two. Further, do several hard pulls at once, they don't each lower by 10 or 20 points. If you do the pulls close together (within a week or two) it will be only the temporary lowering for a month or two. From a lender's perspective if you're reaching out for new lines of credit, it means you're indicating you're about to take on more debt which could affect your ability to pay on further new debts.
Temporarily, yes, but over time this can grow your score if its in a different loan type or length.
Yes and no, circumstances depending. If you pay back that one loan type lets say a car loan, and you have have no other installment loans, then you will have no more recent history of paying on any installment loans. However, if you have a mortgage which is another type of installment loan, you'll take no hit for paying back the car loan as you will continue to have a recent payment history of paying on installment loans. You could take a hit because a nearly paid off loan looks good for the "Amounts owed" component of the score, but you could use a trick like getting a credit card of the same credit line (and not charge anything on it) to avoid that if you really need to.
Not quite true. Having no recent payment history means a lower score, but it you already have some type of loan or credit you pay on every month, not taking out more loans will not hurt your score.
One final thought I really really want to dispel: YOUR FICO SCORE IS NOT INCREASED BY PAYING INTEREST ON CREDIT CARD DEBT!
Try everything you can to avoid carrying credit card debt into next month. Interest rates are crazy high and it does nothing to help you. If you put a purchase on a credit card, make sure to pay the full statement balance every month. If you do this, you'll pay zero interest on any credit card purchases.
One weird thing you missed is the "length of credit" though. Let's say you get your first credit card somewhere as a kid, and now you're 40 and haven't had anything else. Suddenly, that bank wants you to pay a monthly fee to keep your account open. If you get a new credit card somewhere else, and cancel your kid-card, your score is going to get hit quite a bit, no?
If you did it "correct", you'd have 10+ different cards lying in a drawer at home to tons of different credit agencies.
It's all an insane game that you have to play, despite the fact that it can usually be played "for free".
because that's weird. that's not a situation most people would have.
the card they got as a kid would be a shitty card with a very high APR. any smart person would dump it and replace it with a better card.
long term credit card keeping also isn't that huge of an impact on your score. when i got to 10+ years on an account, it bumped it up by 10 points.
it's not an insane game. you clearly have no experience with it. it's mundane and boring stuff that most of us never ever think about outside of weirdos who are trying to maximize their score or people who churn cards for the 0 apr rates.
Which doesn't matter if you pay it off in full each month ;)
yeah, that's how you build credit.
but a lot of people don't use credit that way. they take out personal loads, load up cc, and make minimal payments. and wonder why they are broke and start complaining they were 'entrapped'
Only the Uber wealthy credit cards really have annual fees. For everything else they just expect a minium balance of like 20 bucks. My bank only wants 12.50 in a savings acct and there's no fee for checking or saving.
If your checking acct or credit card has an annual fee and it's not an absurdly high end amex or some shit then it's likely a predatory acct and not a real bank or credit union.
I kept my kid card open for exactly this reason, but thankfully there were no fees involved. The issuer cancelled the card after two years worth of not using it though :(
tldr, debt is a trap. only when you accept it's a trap does it become a tool
if you want/need more $...learn the value of your labor.
For the vast majority of people the only debt they should ever get is a house.
The average person does not have to financial means to pay for a car or school without loans.
A car is absolutely doable without financing l. It's a poverty trap to finance a car. What you can't do is have a brand new car.
it's fine to finance a car you can afford. it may even be benefincial. i can take aout a 20K loan at a near 0 apr, i can take that 20K and invest it and get a return on it. which is better than dumping it all at once into a depreciating asset.
the problem is that people fiance cars they can't afford. like 50K gas guzzlers with massive maintenance bills
Having 20k plus the cash flow to pay a 20k loan is a totally different scenario than buying a car for cash. If you need that 20k to pay the 333/month, it's stupid to trust the market isn't going to go down, and simple savings would net you maybe $500.
the market hasnt' gone down in like 15 years dude. the government will prop it up if it does go down.
It's gone down moth over month many times though. If you are dependant on that principle month to month it's insane to trust the market.
all that matters is the value when you cash out. if you are sitting there agonizing about an assets value month to month you're doing it wrong.
just because you are irrational and don't know how to invest, doesn't mean the rest of us don't. i have a handful of stocks and such, i have no clue what their value is because i check it like once a year. in the 5 years it's been invested my money has doubled.
Investing is great for retirement funds, over the 30 years or so it's great for returns. It's terrible to invest principle you need in scope of months or 1-2 years even.
If you have 20k and a 20k loan, putting that money in the stock market is stupid if you need that money to pay the loan. If you have 20k, a 20k loan, and income to cover loan payments in addition to living, it may be beneficial to invest that 20k, but it's still relatively high risk.
cool. keep telling me how stupid I am. I have seen that 20K become 45K over the past 5 years.
guess i should have just dumped it into a car 5 years ago instead of doubling it. gosh, what a total a moron i am!
When I was car shopping at the end of 2024, I quickly realized the best bang for the buck was around $10-12k because at that price you could get a low-mid range vehicle that was around 6 years old with around 100k miles. Obviously some vehicles in that price range would be older with fewer miles, some would be newer with more miles, but that seemed to be about the price range where you'd get a vehicle which you could reasonably expect to be mechanically sound for at least another 2-3 years. Less than that and you got into vehicles that were far more worn either by age or by mileage, so you'd be trading upfront payment for additional maintenance costs.
$10k is a lot of money to save up. That's about my entire emergency fund right now. That's almost 3 years of socking away $300 a month, or 2 years at $500 a month. Simply put vehicle ownership is horrendously expensive especially for folks making close to minimum wage
you can't afford a car if you only saved up 10K over 3 years.
Ideally yes, but on top of your normal expenses socking away $800/mo is a ton, especially since we're almost certainly talking about a young adult, fairly freshly on their own who's probably only making around 30-40k per year. When each paycheck is under a thousand dollars every couple of weeks that money disappears fast especially with the financial discipline one can realistically expect of a young adult
I don't think I was super human and I had zero issues saving $1200/mo on a 2.2k/mo salary.
but i lived with multiple roommates, ate cheap food, and didn't party.
Hey that's honestly super awesome. Most folks don't have that kind of financial discipline when they're young.
When I was first on my own I was just proud that I was a able to pay extra on my possibly-illegal car loan that I got from a place that was shut down a couple of years later for credit fraud
Most folks I know who were bad with money... had rich parents. So it didn't matter really if they had any discipline or not. They were going ot get bailed out either way, and did, repeatedly.
I can't speak to what goes on in other people's heads. But a lot of people rationalize totally distorted beliefs about money and I can't say I agree that taking on 100K of debt makes any sense if you don't have a clear plan on how to become employed and earn a salary as such to pay that back. Life is about choices and consequences... and for some reason on lemmy people feel like those things should be totally disconnected. The concept of everyone 'pursuing their dreams' doesn't really work in reality because both education and jobs are limited resources over which we compete.
There are also so many alternatives. I just walked my nephew through college application process. He could have gone to a few schools for free, but he decided those schools were 'below' him and he would rather take on debt to go to fancier schools out of pride and arrogance. That's his choice, and I hope it works out for him, but in 5 years if he is crying poor w/ 100K of debt in a 50K job and living outside his means, I am not going bail him out of his own mistake. I knew plenty of people that went to 'lesser' schools for free, and those who went to expensive schools with zero aid and f'ed themselves for life'. The former are a lot happier and chiller than the latter.
But you know what, if my nephew suddenly has cancer or a car accident and has to drop out and has 50K of debt from his choice, I'd probably feel pretty bad for him and help him out. Sometimes shit does happen that is beyond your control.
I'm vacationing with my upper-middle class sibling. They rented a car for the week ... for $970! for one week! It takes me months to save up that much money! And they do this every year!
The wealth gap is rapidly increasing.
Car rentals are so expensive nowadays. Enough so that I've never done it in my adult life. Its always expensive enough that it makes some alternative make way more sense, whether that's driving our own vehicle somewhere or just winging it with public transit
that's cheap. how much did you think it should cost?
it might have been way cheaper if she didn't get insurance. that usually adds 30-40% to the cost
I guess I am just way out of touch. read: too poor to rent a car.
That amount is still crazy to me. A rental car pays for itself in less than a year!
This is why we drive when we go on our yearly trip back to the east coast to visit family. Flying would cost the same once you factor in a hotel stop midway, and would save 8+ hours if we were actually able to drive without stopping, but no one we visit lives near an airport and transportation to/from the airport adds a ton of cost.
Same with phones. Buy a second-hand flagship from a couple of years ago (eg pixel 8), and use a pre-paid plan.
It's not just a few hundred dollars saved on the phone, it's also a few hundred per year on less overpriced contracts.
Prepaid plans have to be more competitively priced because you can switch at will.
I buy all my phones off eBay from reputable resellers. There are plenty that make a living at refurbishing phones, rate each one on a scale, post pics of the phone you will receive. I pay around $120 for mine, $180 if it's a bangin' deal and I really want that unit.
It used to be, but these days the average person can barely afford groceries without a loan.
https://caredge.com/guides/used-car-price-trends-for-2025
https://moneyzine.com/personal-finance/savings-statistics/
... that's as of 2022.
Its worse now, considerably.
But, even assuming 2022 savings levels... that's half the population that would need their savings to multiply by at least a factor of ~x42.5, to be able to afford the average used car, without financing.
... You are wildly, incredibly out of touch.
Sure, yes, its technically possible, technically doable, in approximately the same way that it's technically possible and doable that I could become a millionaire by the end of 2026.
Yep, its a poverty trap to finance a car.
Correct.
... and that is the only viable choice for people in car centric, car dependent American, people who don't have thousands to tens of thousands of dollars in savings, which is the vast majority of people.
In conclusion: America is a poverty trap.
... Metric had a song about this, what, nearly two decades ago?
https://youtube.com/watch?v=fYbrb2YYqdo
The average cost of a car is wildly skewed by luxury models and the absurd prices of new cars. The market has gotten more expensive, so it is more difficult to find reliable cars in the sub 5k range, but under 10k is possible. It's possible to save a few hundred bucks a month and get progressively better cars without financing them, because depreciation isn't significant at the low end of the market.
Yep. And?
Its also reality.
Most used cars on the market are luxury cars that are 5 years or less old... because car companiea just largely stopped making non luxury cars.
This is what the used car market looks like right now, I don't care that its abnormal, I care about trying to evaluate you statement ... in reality, as it currently exists.
This is the idea you're not getting:
No.
Its not.
Not for half the population.
Pay is too low, costs of living are too high.
People largely cannot actually save a few hundred bucks a month, all that goes towards existing debt payments and increasing rent utilities and food costs... and fucking health insurance.
You don't understand how many people were operating on razor thin margins, and now, huge numbers of people are running net negative, getting stuck in some new poverty debt trap, maybe this time its chaining loans to keep buying groceries.
Your evaluation of what is possible is again, yes, technically possible, for a very small amount of people... but generally... it is laughably and wildly insufficient, useless to the vast majority of people it is potentially relevant to, because of how much the overall situation has changed, because of how out of touch you are with the basic parameters of the situation.
The US is a society where car ownership is mandatory to participate in society... and at least half of society cannot actually afford that expense, financed or not.
We need a systemic solution, otherwise, we will experience a systemic collapse.
How to skip steps 2-4?
That is what I have done, I don't like that debt either and some cunt at the bank getting 2/3rds of my housing expenses is only slightly better than a wanker of a landlord getting all of it.
Thank you, holy shit, I get so frustrated seeing the most obviously-disproven misconceptions flying around even communities that purport to be savvy, lol.
Though one thing you didn't mention that I think always should be: re credit card, don't pay SO early that the agencies never see that you borrowed in the first place. In other words, wait until at least your statement date to pay your card (off, ideally). It's your statement balance that gets reported, so if you pay before the statement cycle ends, the agencies won't even know that the transaction(s) happened at all. Pay the card off anytime between your statement hitting, and your due date, and you're golden, credit score improves, and you accrue no interest.
Great write-up, thanks!
Having said that, it's hard not to feel that these rules have been semi purposefully left vague so that people take the wrong actions that will cost them extra money
To add on-top of that, I feel like this system, and most systems around this, are all setup to work great for the rich and the "providers" and just plain less good for us. It's almost like a casino in that the house always wins
Excellent summary, and thank you for the bold section on paying credit card interest. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard that myth.
Your comment is a blessing, thank you for the significant effort <3
My god, I want to write some things up but you NAILED it.
One thing I'll back you on, one's credit score can bounce in a month or three. No big deal. Learn how it works, work the system.