Greentext

I think that's misleading - taking out loans and paying them back is the most well known way of raising a credit score. I don't see why the opposite would be true.

Supposedly some people actually do this, when they can afford to, because they see the boost to their credit score as worth the actual lost cash in interest. From what I gather, credit score helps you to attain more favourable mortgages or other loans, which helps when you make big purchases like cars or if you run a small business.

Example from my own life:

spoiler

The first time i took out a student loan [UK] I left the course after about 2 weeks and repaid it all back because Student Finance England - a private entity that supposedly operates on behalf of the government - was hassling me to return the money straight away. Ironically, i didn't need to do that, and there wasn't much benefit to doing so. But my credit score is abnormally high compared to other peoples' and i think that's why.

One arguably unjust part about credit scores is that the actions of people related to you, or simply sharing the same surname as you, can affect it! E.G i have heard that a friend-of-a-friend's dad took out too many loans and now their credit score suffers.

Seems like a medieval system to me. People joke that it's the capitalist approach to a "social credit score," and I have to agree.

Anyway if it's true that the actions of other people can affect your credit score, it seems like the number is nothing more than a "how much do bankers like you" score. I presume a bankers immediate family will have higher than normal credit scores. What OP/anon perceives as the score going down for contradictory reasons are actually just his score going haywire under a combination of factors outside of his control.