Page 43 - Winning The Credit Game Bundle (CK Patrick)

CHAPTER 5
WINNING CREDIT

HISTORY LENGTH

WHEN YOU’RE CONSIDERING HIRING a new player for your team, you
want as much evidence as possible that they can help your team. If the
player has played many games in the past, that gives you a lot of
opportunity to see how they perform.
In the game of credit, we can think of the number of months of
credit history under your belt as the number of games you have
played. That means that someone with five or ten years of experience
paying off credit lines under their belt is more likely to be picked for
the good “teams”—or in this case, the good mortgages, credit cards,
and car loans—than someone with few or no months of credit history
under their belt.
If you haven’t played many games of repayment before, how can
banks have confidence that you have what it takes to pay off a $300,000
house? The answer is, they can’t. And they probably won’t lend you
enough money to buy such a house.
This means that to create the best possible opportunities for your-
self, you want to start building your credit history right now. This
means finding a loan, a credit card, or both that you can pay off regu-
larly each month to get some wins on your record.
Now, you don’t want just any loan or credit card. As we discussed