“Since I got my first credit card, I used it for all my purchases but paid it in full each month, building a good score — or so I thought. When I went for a car loan, I was denied because I was a ‘thin file,’ meaning I never paid any interest.”
My friend just got denied a mortgage because of this bullshit. Like what the actual fuck!? You’re a responsible borrower but you committed the ultimate sin of NOT PAYING THEM INTEREST!
… Like what the fuck?
Yes, it’s a real thing. When I worked at a major bank the customers that would pay in full monthly on their cards were considered the “bad” customers. Those that paid only minimum and got hit with late fees were our “good” customers.
From their perspective, they make nothing off of people who don’t pay interest or fees. Thus, it only makes sense that the “best” customers are the ones carrying a balance, because they’re the ones who generate profits.
They still make a percentage of each transaction. But it sure isn’t 18% interest
This Experian FAQ article indicates “thin file” is about number of credit accounts, not amount of interest.
Yes. Credit score is simply how much you borrow and how often you repay it. The thinking is that, with a thicker file (more accounts paid), there’s less risk.
This can cause some real fuckery: they want to see different types of loans, so student loans with no missed payments is good for your credit despite being bad for your life. It doesn’t care if there’s interest. The misconception may occur because with almost every type of loan, there is interest.
I’ve been fortunate enough to never need a loan and my credit did slightly suffer because of that. That said, any 18 year old can open a starter credit card and get a score of >700 within the year as long as they don’t miss a payment.
This is weird. They probably only have 1 cc with a very low credit limit that doesn’t let create a good picture of how they are managing debt
I’ve never paid interest but I have 7 credit cards and about $50k in credit. I was able to get 2 loans for cars and I’ve been offered good mortgage rates
They want a profitable client. So yeah they basically want you to pay an invisible premium for your credit score. I routinely carry a small balance over and my credit rating is far better than people who pay everything off right away. They want a reliable profit, not a reliable payer, if it makes more sense that way. Think of it like your subscription to credit. It doesn’t need to be a large amount either, literally just a couple dollars a month when you math it out.
Yeah, if we’re going to have a credit score then we need the government to run it. That kind of cross corporation tool that facilitates commerce is what we used to call a public good.
But we’re so deep down the, “must let rich people make themselves richer” hole that we can’t even see it.
This is incorrect, of course. Anyone reading this thread, please do not pay interest for nothing.
First, let me say this is not a defense of the credit score system which is unethical. I hate it too, but for the real reasons.
Credit score is not determined by the bank. Your lines of credit report to an agency which considers your utilization but not whether you pay interest. Credit agencies don’t care if banks profit, they are already making money by collecting your personal data and selling it.
I have never paid a cent of interest and do not have anything but credit cards on my file. My score is above 800. I hate to say it, but Lemmy has been consistently worse than Reddit for financial advice, and I’d suggest visiting the cRedit sub for accurate hate on the credit system.
Except they have different credit products for different things. Products specifically asked for by the banks. That’s their interest. There’s 3 credit companies and if one of them won’t take the info into account then the other two will.
I was curious about the adoption thing and didn’t wanna just weigh in on vibes, so I took 5 seconds to search it and yall…
Some of this is bleak.
https://time.com/6051811/private-adoption-america/
Anne Moody, author of the 2018 book The Children Money Can Buy, about foster care and adoption, says the system can amount to “basically producing babies for money.”
Claudia Corrigan D’Arcy, a birth-parent advocate and birth mother who blogs extensively about adoption, says she routinely hears of women facing expense-repayment pressures. Some states, such as California and Nevada, explicitly consider birth-parent expenses an “act of charity” that birth parents don’t have to pay back. In other states, though, nothing prohibits adoption entities from trying to obligate birth parents to repay expenses when a match fails.
Yes, there are some VERY disturbing adoption systems here. Particularly in the south, the prolife/fake abortion clinics will guilt trip women into giving up their kid for adoption to an agency they work with. That agency ONLY allows Christian families to adopt (often white only) even though they take children from any religious background. These families adopt at around $20,000 per kid or higher. The original birth mom MIGHT get her birth paid for. The adopting parents can choose to back out at any time.
I became aware of this when Cameron Robbins was in the news for being eaten by a shark. He was adopted through one of these agencies. I wondered how his birth mom felt when they decided to cover up his death.
If our government can pay foster families direct sums for keeping their kids, they should just pay it to the bioparents. Yes fostering can have a place at times, but the way it’s done here is barbaric and akin to trafficking and slavery.
Doesn’t pledging allegiance to a piece of colored fabric count as “worshipping a false idol?”
You know… considering they’ve got that whole ten commandment thing coming and all.
It’s also not required on a daily basis, or even at all. Haven’t actually said the pledge since grade school.
13."The working class being gaslit by the 1% to blame the rest of the working class for all of their problems. The amount of people I see thinking their tax dollars are paying for student loan forgiveness, social security, WIC, Medicaid, or welfare is just so ridiculous. You can literally look up exactly where your tax dollars are going. It’s not ‘fake news;’ it’s readily available.
This one drives so many of the other problems. I constantly hear (mostly from my conservative neighbors) about how we shouldn’t be spending so much of our tax dollars on various programs. One of my neighbors was recently complaining about paying for school bus drivers.
Here’s a chart showing where your taxes go.
Wanna know what’s the most ridiculous about it? That chunk going towards healthcare is for a minority of the population. The US ends up paying more per capita than any other country to cover a minority!
This is some garbage. Adoption is NOT buying and selling children. I mean, I guess that happens under the guise of adoption. But tons of kids in foster care need permanent homes and loving families, and their biological family is not an option for any number of reasons. It is a tragedy that this happens, but fuck off with this narrative that adoption is buying and selling kids. Tons of other shit in there was bogus too. Fuck this article.
Yeah, that was a super weird inclusion.
Now, propublica did a great multipart series on people actually selling and buying children on Craigslist and Facebook. Foster parents take kids in for the money, then shuffle them off to basically predators. Not basically, they were almost all predators. Just by getting in touch with them via email after finding each other on Craigslist or Facebook groups. These kids were just driven sometimes hundreds of miles and dropped off with someone entirely unknown in a Walmart parking lot.
It was horrifying, but I can’t find the article anymore. I could’ve sworn it was propublica, but now I’m second guessing that, unless they had to take it down, maybe by claims from meta.
