FICO to incorporate buy-now-pay-later loans into credit scores

Theoretically, credit should be used for one thing: to make more money. (not less)

However, instead of using it to buy or construct a machine to triple what you can produce in an hour, the average person is using it to delay having to work that hour at all, in exchange for having to work an hour and six minutes sometime later.

At some point, you run out of hours available and the house of cards collapses.

i.e., credit can buy time in the nearly literal sense, you can do an hour's work in half an hour because the money facilitates it, meaning you can now make more money. If instead of investing in work you're spending on play, then you end up with a time deficit.

or, e.g. you can buy 3 franchises in 3 months instead of 3 years (i.e. income from the 1 franchise), trading credit for time to make more money, instead of burning it. It'd have been nice had they taught me this in school.

Do you also think that way about buying a house with a mortgage (credit)? I don't.

A mortgage isn't used to make more money. It's used so people can own a house after saving for a few years, rather than waiting until they've saved for a few decades.

Often, a mortgage is either used to make money (from rising house prices) or save money (when the mortgage is cheaper than rent).

Often, houses are depreciating assets that are expensive to maintain, but people take mortgage and buy them anyway. Often, renting is cheaper than buying, but people buy anyway, because they like the idea of owning their home. Often, people buy a home, because suitable homes are not available to rent.

Money is only a means to an end. It has no inherent value. And very often, the subjective value of a thing is essentially unrelated to the monetary value.

You can believe that if you like of course, but I am definitely not teaching my children that.

Renting cheaper than owning sounds like a very short-term view.

My dad explained to me the nice thing about a 30 year fixed mortgage in simple terms: 10, 20, up to 30 years later ... your "rent" is the same.

It's a simple experiment to see what a person's rent was going for 30 years ago in your community and then see what a person with a typical 30-year mortgage would have paid each month 30 years ago. Because one of those two is still paying the same monthly amount today and about to have an asset they can pass along to their kids or spouse (or cash-out if they want to retire to live in a trailer in Eloy, Arizona).