Building Credit

Anonymous · ‎06-30-2017

Hello,

I've recently gotten into the credit world and have been hyper-focused on establishing my credit history. It started off a nightmare clearing out collections and disputing things but I finally have all derogatories deleted - a clean slate. My scores are as follows:

705 equifax

723 transunion

717 Experian

I have 6 unique inquiries appearing in the last year, 1 within the past 6 months (5/20). I've got an auto loan with a low balance, and two credit cards that usually don't carry a balance so I'm always under 10% utilization. My length of credit history is 1 year 4 months from my capital one card (started as secured) and my average account age is 7 months. The capital one card has a $500.00 limit and the citi doublecash has a $1000.00 limit. I really would like to have one more card to have another tradeline building some history. I want to apply for either a discover it card or a bank of america rewards card but am remaining patient - I don't want to waste an inquiry. How long should I wait to apply? What kind of credit limit should I expect? I make around 50k per year

stargazer25 · ‎06-30-2017

With that short AAoA I would be concerfned with tanking your AAoA even more so and dropping your credit score.Too many credit inquiries will drop your score as well. Usually with small limit cards like that you will end up with other smaller limit cards b/c no prime card wants to be the one to give you the big SL. With that said, I think you can check for a prequal with Disccover. I would wait till your AAoA hits at least a year before your next move.

This comes from somone that started with a $1K secured card from Cap1.

Starting Scores: September 2015 minus 500 across the board
Current Scores: October 2017 EQ: 715 TU: 710 EX: 716
In My Wallet:
Cap1 QS: $4.8K - AMEX BCP: $4.2K - Old Navy Visa: $7K - Nordstrom $3.8K - VS $500 (FTW!)
BofA AU: $12K AMEX AU: $25K
Business: AMEX BCP $15K

Anonymous · ‎07-01-2017

Your profile is fairly solid, it isnt bad at all. Short credit history, yes....but not the end of the world. I'm not sure, I feel like theres definitely a chance you can get approved but at the same time not sure about limits. Like the other poster mention, maybe possibly wait till your average age of accounts hit a year or so could help. Hopefully your next approval can get you to the 3-5k range at least, you never know. I know theres a lot of members here who luckily hit the 5k range on their next approval and it all goes up hill from there in terms of bigger limits.

Both the Discover It and Bofa Cash rewards are prime and solid picks. Maybe someone can chime in on which is easier to get ya foot in the door with....

Anonymous · ‎07-01-2017

Some of the inquiries will leave the 12mo window if I wait till AAoA hits 1 year as well. Thanks for the advice I think I will look into applying around then

Anonymous · ‎07-03-2017

My son has a credit profile pretty similar to yours. He just started building credit less than a year ago and has scores in the low 700s, and he got approved for $8,300 on one of the cards at Navy Federal Credit Union. YMMV, but if you can somehow qualify to get into NFCU I think it's worth a shot.

jdxprs1 · ‎07-03-2017

Where do you do your banking?

Last app 1/2/2017.
In the garden until at least 6/2/2017.

medicgrrl · ‎07-03-2017

My son's length of credit was only 9 months (auto loan) when he was approved for a $2000 Discover IT NHL card. His scores were nearing 700 at the time and he had no other accounts listed on his report.

EQ 778 EXP 782 TU 729

Anonymous · ‎07-03-2017

I bank with BB&T

jdxprs1 · ‎07-03-2017

Go to the bank and sit down with them to apply. Explain what you want. A go to credit card! Ask for 5 or 10k. See what they can do for you.

Last app 1/2/2017.
In the garden until at least 6/2/2017.

SouthJamaica · ‎07-03-2017

@Anonymous wrote:
Hello,

I've recently gotten into the credit world and have been hyper-focused on establishing my credit history. It started off a nightmare clearing out collections and disputing things but I finally have all derogatories deleted - a clean slate. My scores are as follows:

705 equifax
723 transunion
717 Experian

I have 6 unique inquiries appearing in the last year, 1 within the past 6 months (5/20). I've got an auto loan with a low balance, and two credit cards that usually don't carry a balance so I'm always under 10% utilization. My length of credit history is 1 year 4 months from my capital one card (started as secured) and my average account age is 7 months. The capital one card has a $500.00 limit and the citi doublecash has a $1000.00 limit. I really would like to have one more card to have another tradeline building some history. I want to apply for either a discover it card or a bank of america rewards card but am remaining patient - I don't want to waste an inquiry. How long should I wait to apply? What kind of credit limit should I expect? I make around 50k per year

I think you could build your scores easily. Credit card utilization & installment utilization are 2 totally separate things.

Do the following before applying; once you've done these and everything's reported, you'll be good to apply.

1. since you have 2 credit cards, have 1 card report a zero balance each month, with the other card reporting a balance of 10% or less (but not zero)

2. since you've got 1 installment loan with a low balance, just make sure that it's at 9% or less of the original loan amount (but not zero)

Once these are in place, get your FICO scores and go ahead and apply for whichever of those cards you feel like getting. Or come back and ask for recommendations.