Re:Could a Bank Deny Your Loan Based on Your Facebook Friends?
by SilasX on Friday October 02, 2015 @02:19PM
(#10320274)
I went through the same thing! After 18 months on my first real job, I had zero debt (ever), no dependents, and income of three times the median for the area, and yet I was still classified as subprime.
Why? Because I'd never gotten a credit card before. Had I simply moved existing purchases onto it, and taken the same (zero) revolving debt, I would have appeared as much less risky. [1]
What's worse is that when I went to the "what's my FICO"/credit report sites, they would consistently say that my credit score should be 740, even though this never translated into any observable consequences in terms of ease of getting loans.
And what made that even worse was that there were actual critics of the subprime practices then that refused to believe this was happening, that anyone classified as subprime must have deserved it in some way, even after I offered to forward this information over!
[1] Yes, I know, I should have known to pointlessly get a credit card and switch which buckets expenses go in, which is somehow informative about my credit risk.
Why? Because I'd never gotten a credit card before. Had I simply moved existing purchases onto it, and taken the same (zero) revolving debt, I would have appeared as much less risky. [1]
What's worse is that when I went to the "what's my FICO"/credit report sites, they would consistently say that my credit score should be 740, even though this never translated into any observable consequences in terms of ease of getting loans.
And what made that even worse was that there were actual critics of the subprime practices then that refused to believe this was happening, that anyone classified as subprime must have deserved it in some way, even after I offered to forward this information over!
[1] Yes, I know, I should have known to pointlessly get a credit card and switch which buckets expenses go in, which is somehow informative about my credit risk.