09 Mar 2019

What Even is a Tradeline?

 

There once was a time when the people who worked at Boost Credit 101 didn’t know what a tradeline was. This time can be likened to what it was like when Thomas Anderson (Neo) was inside the Matrix, before discovering that he was, indeed, trapped within a computer program called The Matrix and that his entire life was a lie. Tradelines are just like this. Okay maybe not just, but once you know about tradelines, it can be pretty hard to believe that you believed what you believed before you knew. But wait, you don’t know about them? Or maybe you have an idea, after all, what does tradeline mean on credit report exactly? Well, let’s start with what it means when you have none. Let’s say you’ve never used credit, always paid cash (or you’re very young and just getting started). If you’re lucky, when you look at your reports the scores will just say NA, which means “Not Applicable.” With no tradelines on credit report this is what your report would look like, because anything, anything at all, that reports on your credit, is a tradeline. They are the accounts that you pay on. The most major superlative contributor to your scores. Which leads us to…

How do you get tradelines on credit report?

We have many, many people that come to us asking for help with their credit in severe disarray. The thing that always surprises us the most is when we see inquiries numbering over 20. We’ve even seen inquiries in the 50’s and 60’s. Let us give you a free piece of advice: don’t do that. Credit should not be applied for willy nilly. It’s not like dating, where you ask out one person, get a “no,” and keep going until you get a “yes.” A single decline should be the reddest of red lights, and you should evaluate why, exactly, you got a decline.

A decline (along with the letter) can be one of two things, a devastating end to your dreams, or a wake up call that something isn’t right in your world. Do you need more credit? Do you need to remove negative items, do you need more income (ala be more realistic)? The good news is that of those three things, we can help you with two. The bad news is that the time it takes will go from undetermined (for the income issue), to a fair bit (the negatives), to not very long at all, adding more credit. You might even be able to take advantage of some good cheap tradelines for sale.

Are cheap tradelines enough?

We get a lot of questions about which of our tradelines is the cheapest. Which, as we discussed in a previous post, is kind of…we don’t want to say “wrong”…but it is perhaps not the best way to look at how tradelines can best help you. After all, if you’re looking for cheap tradelines for sale, you’ll find plenty on Craigslist. But do you really want to trust a guy on Craigslist, the place that is known for being about the seediest corner of the internet possible? We know what you’re thinking, but don’t. DO NOT DO IT. They will take your money and you’ll get nothing, or you’ll get some tradeline with a high utilization or missed payments, either one will do far more damage than good. When you’re in the market for tradelines for sale cheap, you can find good, even great deals, but if you need larger limits or a lot of history, then the cheapest lines are not going to be the best lines for you.

Remember that hyper realistic movie “Armageddon” where the astronauts who landed a space shuttle on a moving asteroid had to drill down to a depth of 800 feet to set off a nuclear bomb to save the planet? If they didn’t make that mark, then the whole mission was moot. Adding a tradeline, while not holding planet-wide significance, can be similar. If you need to pull up your score with history, then the cheapest tradeline that’s six months old isn’t going to do what you need. How to add tradelines is the easiest part of fixing your credit, but picking the right ones, that takes finesse.