Page 19 - Winning The Credit Game Bundle (CK Patrick)

CHAPTER 2
HOW CAN I BENEFIT

FROM CREDIT?

YOUR CREDIT SCORE is very much like your track record in a competitive
sport. An expert on the game can glance at somebody’s credit history
and know exactly how good they are at playing the credit game. A
credit expert can estimate that person’s chances of winning in specific
circumstances because they can see what challengers they’ve already
faced and how they fared.
This is important, because the better a bank or creditor thinks you
are at the game, the more money they will give you. Now it’s not a free
gift—you have to pay it back. But how much you have to pay back, and
how much you’re given in the first place, will largely depend on your
credit score.
Say, for example, you want to buy a house. To do this, on paper,
you need $300,000, because that’s how much the house costs. Obvi-
ously not a lot of people have $300,000 lying around. But someone
with an excellent credit score could get a $300,000 mortgage, which
will allow them to live in the house and claim ownership while they
gradually pay the house off over time. The same holds true for busi-
ness loans, cars, and countless other forms of credit.
In fact, it’s a little-known truth that the very wealthy rarely spend
their own money to make money—they typically use their excellent