Now in general, I’m not a fan of paying for a credit score and generally think it’s best to just be patient and build it over time. But I think it might make sense for some people who are thinking of applying for a significant loan or mortgage in the near future.

So in this video, I’m going to break down how you can buy a 730+ credit score with only about $25.

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So if you’ve heard anything about buying a credit score before, you’ve probably heard of buying tradelines. I give that a big thumbs down because you’re essentially paying someone to add you to a line of credit that they have had established for a while.

These are deceptive, can cost thousands of dollars, and may sometimes qualify as bank fraud. So let’s steer clear of that.

Instead of potentially committing a crime, I’m going to fill you in on a way to “buy” a credit score that is 100% by-the-books and approved of by banks as a legit way to establish your credit. This is by reporting your bill payments to the credit bureaus.

Your credit score is largely a measure of your ability to make on-time payments (this makes up 35% of your credit score), so many banks are willing to take your cell phone payment and utility bills into account when calculating your score.

This can be an ideal solution for people in the Dave Ramsey “credit cards are evil” camp because it allows you to build credit without the use of credit cards or the potential to get into debt.

Now, you personally can’t just start editing your credit report and adding your Netflix payment to your credit report, but there are a number of companies that will allow you to do just that. One of them is a completely free option, and the other is going to run you $24.95 per year.

The free option is Experian Boost and it is a service provided by the credit bureau Experian to “boost” your credit score by linking to your bank account, finding the monthly bills you pay and subscriptions you are on, and reporting these on your Experian credit report. These are only going to show up on your Experian report and not on your TransUnion or Equifax reports. So if you’re in the market for applying for a loan, it might be worthwhile to ask the lender which report they’ll use before you sign up for Experian Boost.

But what about the downsides?

Well, Experian Boost only reports positive payments which might seem like a good thing but lenders aren’t a huge fan of this. Imagine if every time you paid late on a credit card or went into default you could just opt out of putting that on your credit report. Kinda makes the whole system not very useful. So some banks don’t value Experian Boost as highly as typical on-time payments.

The paid option for increasing your score is similar but likely to have a bigger impact. This is called eCredable. eCredable is going to work with your TransUnion report instead of your Experian report and is generally looked at more highly by lenders. That’s because they don’t plug into your bank account.

Instead, eCredable plugs into your utility and phone bill accounts to track your payment history. As a result, they’re going to be reporting on-time payments as well as late payments so lenders will know they’re getting the full picture. Additionally, eCredable pulls back the last 24 months of payments across an unlimited number of accounts which can have a really big impact for someone with low-or-no credit.

On their site, they estimate that a person coming in with no credit could see their score jump to over 730 with only 3 bills that they have paid on-time for 12 months. That’s a huge jump and enough to make you eligible for many of the best rewards credit cards out there.

In the end, I think that both of these services have a use case for people who need to build their credit from scratch and are looking for a better option than a predatory credit card. Experian Boost is free and the biggest downside is that it won’t impact your score at all, so if you’ve got a thin credit file and pay bills from your bank account, it might be worth it to take a couple minutes to sign up and see what happens.

eCredable does cost $25 per year which is more than zero, but if you are planning on applying for a loan relatively soon, paying $25 to boost your credit score by a potentially significant amount could end up saving you thousands of dollars or more.

Personally, I don’t use either of these nor am I incentivized to get you to sign up, but I do think they make much better options than buying tradelines or paying someone $200 to remove a credit inquiry off of your report.

TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro

0:40 How NOT To Buy A Credit Score

1:30 How Buying A Credit Score Works

3:00 The Free Option (Experian Boost)

5:10 The Downside Of Experian Boost

6:55 The Paid Option (eCredable Lift)

8:25 How To Boost Your Score To 700+

9:30 Who Should Use This Strategy?

10:45 Other Routes For Increasing Your Credit Score

11:40 Outro

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