With Approved Credit - WAC

With approved credit, or WAC (like wack-a-mole), is a signal from financiers letting buyers know that they can get this deal if they have good enough credit. As you hopefully already know, your credit is dependent on a lot of things, like your income, your past history paying off debt, your debt-to-income ratio, your credit limit, and all sorts of fun tidbits that aren’t always intuitive.

If WAC isn’t familiar to you, time to get some glasses. It’s usually mentioned in really, really tiny letters below a loan offer of some sort, giving the deets of how this magically amazing deal would theoretically occur, one of the requirements of which is WAC. A good WAC fixes a lot of things, no?

Why bother with this tiny WAC print? Because financiers don’t want to get in trouble. People could accuse them of a bait-and-switch tactic, luring in people with the promise of a good deal, only to switch it with a less-good deal. This is a type of fraud, and violates customer protection laws, ergo the fine print with all the details on the special offer in store.

Look for WAC next time a deal catches your eye—if you can see it, that is.