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Notes -
On Credit Scores
I stumbled across this voxplainer on pocket: https://www.vox.com/videos/2023/12/14/24000469/what-does-credit-score-mean, and it reminded me of the Biden admin rule increasing the fees on mortgages to borrowers with good credit(https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/3978409-why-is-the-biden-administration-punishing-financially-responsible-homeowners/), and I think that at the time the justification was some kind of racial justice angle. And that in turn led me to think "golly willikers, people are going to start fighting each other over credit scores, might as well get ahead of it on the motte". (If you're not familiar with how credit scores work for some reason, here's an advertisement for a credit scoring company that explains pretty well: https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/credit-education/score-basics/understanding-credit-scores/).
Well not really, I'm not a 50's comic book character. But it seems odd in retrospect that we didn't have a motte discussion in April/May about the change in fee structure, and it seems like there is or is about to be a woke push to try to adjust credit scoring for equity reasons, and this is the kind of boring economic mismanagement that can really jack up the economy if it happens. Now most of the things vox suggests are anodyne if probably stupid and mildly negative, but it's easy to see a jump to government rules getting a whole lot stupider and more destructive; the whole sector is very heavily regulated.
Now a personal story- when I was much younger, I needed to buy a car because the beatermobile I had was broken down and I lived too far from work to walk(and in Tarrant county, there is no public transportation to speak of), and I decided I might as well buy something good that would last a while, even if I had to borrow for it, in lieu of buying another craigslist beatermobile that I'd have to replace in a year or two. I found a good gently used truck online, it was a good deal... and I got denied financing because of lack of credit history. But, my dad put it in his name and told me to get a credit card with a major bank and pay off the full amount on autopay so we didn't have to do that again. I'm still driving that truck and haven't had to spend any money on repairs in five years except new tires(because there was something in the road) and a battery(which was cheap), and I have good credit and don't need my parents to cosign loans. But I can easily imagine if I'd been estranged, didn't know who my dad was, just had parents who were financially illiterate/had bad credit(but I repeat), whatever. I would have had to buy a beatermobile, spend as much on mechanical repairs as I did on buying it, and then buy another beatermobile and do the same thing. And I wouldn't have been able to buy a house; I'd have been stuck in flophouses or the kind of apartments that don't bother to have an English language application because it's all illegal immigrants. So I can kind of see vox's point- there really are people with generational advantages(I'm one of them), although I don't think most of it is an aftereffect of 50s racism(it's mostly just lack of impulse control) some people get the short end of the stick. Most of them would probably still be behind if we had a level playing field, sure, but we don't- something as simple as "your parents can give good advice" is a major advantage, and it correlates with being the sort of person who would figure out how to have a good credit score anyways, but it's not a perfect correlation.
And for a lot of reasons, people who lack those major advantages are disproportionately black, and this isn't fixable. I happen to hold the belief that we shouldn't try very hard because of omelets, eggs, and the history of ideologically-driven progressive interventions in the economy. Current credit scoring is probably about as fair as can reasonably be expected(which is not perfectly fair). Adding financial literacy classes to high school curricula might be good, but let's be real, the kids who need the instruction aren't learning anyways. I don't think there's much to be done about it, and credit scoring formulae do what they're intended to do, which is accurately reflect creditworthiness.
However, it does not seem to me like people holding the opposite view are obviously delusional the same way as progressive attitudes towards crime are. Some people, through no fault of their own, are bad credit risks, and there really are things that don't get reported to credit agencies which probably should so some people who are good credit risks lack sufficient history for a credit score. And so we can probably expect the "we should do something to make credit scores more equitable" idea to survive the backlash against woke. Vox mentioned multiple states banning the use of credit scores in making insurance decisions; I don't support this, but it's perfectly understandable to me that some people would even if I disagree with them. It seems like this is an underrated aspect of wokeness which will probably survive and where the woke have the potential to do real damage. The Biden admin rule above I don't expect to have good results, but it also seems like something with a pretty minor impact, but which is also the tip of the iceberg. Which raises the question: what else might a woke federal government do to try to hamfistedly improve "equity" in this area?
One thing I'd add is that past examples like good advice or straight up having the cash to assist with certain major purchases, parents can further advantage their kids. They add their underage children (or of age, but that's less relevant) as an authorized user to a specific credit card. Paid in full, on time, utilizing ~7-15% of limit, and increasing limit every 6 months-year... kid could reach adulthood with a perfect score and many years of reliable history.
This knowledge is becoming more common in various different populations- my upper middle class friends' parents who worked in accounting/finance did this for their kids about 20 years ago (mine did not), but I recently had an uber driver who had been doing this for his teenagers.
I expect as underage credit building becomes more common, young adult scores will become less indicative of ability to pay, though I imagine fuckups will ruin their own scores quickly enough for the system to correct things. I expect said fuckups will be a central example of how credit is a privilege based system, though it's more of a loophole exploit that didn't substantially exist for most of the system's history.
This doesn't give you a perfect score as your history only has a single credit type, but it does give you a very good score.
However based on the very small sample of people whose detailed financial history I've seen the apple doesn't fall far from the tree regarding credit factors.
You're absolutely correct that no credit mix = no 850, the actual perfect score.
But my understanding is that above 760 there aren't any better rates or other perks, it's just a nicer cushion.
Auto loan is certainly possible with parental cosigner.
Mortgage is kinda wacky but could be done with parental cosigner with the kid still living with parents but landlording to pay mortgage. Down payment on a house would certainly be worth more than covering tuition at most colleges/most subjects, even if housing is in a bit of a bubble and rates are ass.
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