I just had lunch with a mortgage broker and a lender. We were talking about bankruptcy and the options that debtors have for future credit. It was kind of a "Duh!" moment for me, because although I know a fair amount about debt and discharging debt and the various kinds of negotiations that can take place about that, I know very little about credit and credit scoring. And do you know who knows a ton about credit scores and how to raise them? Mortgage brokers. They know what credit scores mean and how they got that way, and they know little tricks about carrying debt in ways that do and don't hurt your credit scores. Their bread and butter is about finding ways around the limitations of a credit score, and planning to maximize credit scores. I learned a ton talking to them.
My eyes tend to glaze over when it comes to credit scores and mortgage options. I mean, I am reasonably intelligent and am perhaps more dorkily interested in kinds of financing and debt structure than most people. And I'm interested in lenders and borrowers and the relationship between them and the information discrepancy between them, and the way people buy and sell risk. But credit scoring has always seemed too tricky and obscure and technical for me to try to learn. Today I learned that there are some people who know the ins and outs of these reports, who don't take the numbers in them as givens, and who can explain what they know to people who are trying to make choices about money. It was a cool lunch.
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