62
He who goes out owing the most wins. Lived like a king and didn’t pay for a damned thing.
-Unpaid debt gets sent to collections.
-Collectors would try to contact you.
-Your debt would be sold multiple times among multiple agencies, all of which would make efforts to try and contact you to collect the debt.
-After about 7+ years the debt is written off by the agencies and drops off credit reports.
-Once the debt dissappears your credit score would go up.
-You don't need to leave America, you can ignore debtors/change your number/avoid being served (obviously laws are state dependent). An attempt to reclaim what you purchased could be made depending on how much you owe/what you bought but usually it's not worth the hassel.
-If you leave the US and want to see if debtors are still looking for you pulling your credit reports will reflect it.
None of this applies to student debt.
After about 7+ years the debt is written off by the agencies and drops off credit reports.
*Is supposed to be written off, falls off your credit report, and they cannot take any legal action to reclaim the debt. This does not stop the bill collecting calls and e-mails and text messages, because the 7 year timer is from the last time you gave them money, so they will sneakily try anything they can to get you to pay them literally anything in order to re-open those doors, including lying to you about settlement discounts and the like. Debt collectors are a special breed of evil.
With a net worth below 1 billion, it's called a crime.
With a net worth above 1 billion, it's called a bailout.
Same question, asking for a friend too
Far more common is declaring bankruptcy. It's totally legal, no need to leave the country.
I kinda did that in the early 00's. Left the US and told creditors* to kick rocks. They basically just wrote it all off. I came back 10ish years later and it was like it never happened. I went to get a loan for a motorcycle when I got back and they told me that since I didn't have any credit history (wtf?) that it would be a slightly higher interest rate. Now some 15 years after that, I'm a model citizen, credit wise. I'll save the next time for retirement.
- I do apologize to Gateway for not paying for that PC and causing them to go under.
Wait what? Did you find out why you had no credit history rather than a bad one? Did you expect some legal issues when you moved back to the US?
No, I'm not sure how it happened. I found some default judgements against me searching threw court records; but it wasn't on my credit at that point. I did expect to be hit by a surprise garnishment or seized tax return. But they never came.
I'm guessing I fell through the cracks during some data migration. I doubt you could pull that off today.
Ya I think someone really blessed you lol
I think it resets after 7 years, but I could be wrong and don't know the specifics of how that works
FCRA and the like. Most things will end up being unreportable after about 7 years, but there are exceptions and gotchas
I think it resets after 7 years, but I could be wrong and don't know the specifics of how that works
My friend did this twenty years ago. Sold everything, put a bunch of camping and photography gear on the credit cards then "disappeared" to become a nature photographer.
Isn't that how Kevin Smith made clerks? Just maxed out his credit to make a movie
basically. He also mentioned that he allegedly might have lied about how much money he made to get enough credit limit to afford it. If it didn't make any money, he was going to work at that video store forever. lol
And now they're living the dream?
He died 19 years ago
So living the dream.
But that was fake. You don't get the concept.
I don't know but I think you'd enjoy the finale of 3rd Rock From The Sun. The aliens find out they're leaving earth forever. They're sad but make the most of it by maxing out their credit cards and having a party.
Although, the writers weren't sure if they were coming back for another season or not. Presumably, they would have had to deal with consequences next season if they returned
Yeah, this has been a known thing in the credit world for years-- they call it bust out fraud. These days they have computer statistical models watching for stuff like this, and will likely shut you down before you get to your limit.
https://www.transunion.com/blog/how-to-prevent-bust-out-fraud
So you slow build to it, got it
As someone with citizenship in another country I have to admit I have daydreamed about this lol. Which probably means I'm in their model somewhere.
Yea, imagine every transaction goes through except the plane ticket...
That depends. Does your country of origin have an extradition agreement with the Philippines?
So theoretically someone could actually take out a ton of loans and move to a country that doesn't have an extradition agreement?
Theoretically, yes. But then you would be a US citizen in a foreign country. Eventually, that country will make you either leave or become a citizen.
Also, even though extradition wouldn't be possible, deportation might still be on the table if you piss off the wrong people the right way.
You might also want to consider the chance of the countries having an extradition agreement in the future
With the US? lol
What everyone is missing here is that you need a visa, and eventually your passport will expire and you'll need a new one. Regardless of the extradition angle, the local government will care about your immigration status.
What you'll probably want to also need to do is marry a local for residency. They'll want you to spend that money on them, so...
people generally don't like moving abroad because they get lonely and frustrated. but yeah you can skip debt by moving abroad.
You could get blacklisted for Visa, MasterCard and Amex, others too I'm sure. So you'd have to use cash from then on. Not sure about other penalties.
You can still use a bank card, debit cards exit, it’s not like only paper money exists outside of credit cards.
Visa and Mastercard
It doesn't matter if debit or credit, cards are overwhelmingly issued by one of these two
They'll call you. A lot.
They can call me whatever they want.
They'll call the number you gave them. Numbers can be easily changed
What's the credit limit on your credit card? I think $50K is really high. If you had 5 cards each with a$50K limit, and none of them had any balance, "maxing out your credit cards" means you'd have spent $250K.
Then you'd have $250K worth of stuff (or experiences ) but no additional spending money. Would it really be worth leaving your family, friends, home, culture, and still have to find a way to continue earning money to live on, for that amount?
It wouldn't be worth it to me. Maybe that's why you don't hear about it happening much.
If you wanted to long-game it, maybe you could emigrate to another country, work for a few years and get established/build up a credit score, then max out your credit and just go home?
Would it really be worth leaving your family, friends, home, culture,
I myself had no plans of doing any of this, but when you put it like that, it's got me thinking.
We'll use your example to make it easier. You max out your cards and loans on crypto, not stuff. Then you convert it back when you get to whatever low cost country and you'd be able to start a small business with it.
The move of course wouldn't be too enticing to most people but there are definitely people who don't have those ties to stay, it's not that rare for people leave their home countries.
wtf 50k? I've never had a card go over 2k, and the highest I've ever been offered was 5k. I can't imagine the level of wealth you'd need to spend that much in a month.
I have a $50k card, and I'm broke as fuck.
I've had the card for 10 years and always pay on time.
I have a credit card with $25k limit on it. I kept accepting increases because I thought it was funny how they kept giving it to me. Thrn I heard having a lot of credit lowered your credit score or some bullshit so stopped. I still get offers to raise it. I'm not rich, just paid off my house.
I'm not so sure that higher limits reduce your credit score, if you kept your spending the same then your credit utilization % would be lower, which is a factor that increases your credit score.
I don't know how it works. I never use a $1000 of my limit, let alone $25k. Especially at 20% or what ever my card is.
Yeah that dude is right. One of the things they look at is available credit. If you close an account with a $20k limit and zero balance, your score will drop.
For any future/current parents with good credit: if you add one of your kids to your credit card, their credit rating gets a boost.
Probably not much other than never being able to return without some consequences. It happens more often than you think.
this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2026
62 points (100.0% liked)
No Stupid Questions
49359 readers
374 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS