Okay, so here's my deal. My industry crapped out around 2008, SO and I lost our jobs, vehicles repo'd, no income, hard times wah wah sob story go here... Needless to say, we lived through it but both our scores tanked. I went back to school to finish out my bachelors in 2010, wracked up a cool 40k in student loans before graduating in 2013. I didn't even want to check my credit score back then. I lived in perpetual fear. I remember being so embarassed after a lady asking me if my score was over 600 to waive a utility deposit. Collections on my arse all the time. Just being miserable.
Got my taxes back in spring 2014 and decided to get a secured credit card. My score was barely in the 500s at this point (still up from a low 451 back in 2010, which had been the last time I checked prior!). Went with my banking institution -- I've since realized a credit union would have been a WAY better decision, but I digress -- which was/still is Bank of America. They gave me a $300 secured card. Paid my deposit, put it in my pocket, ran about 70% utilization through the first year of it without really being aware of any of the factors involved in credit.
In December of 14 I got a whim to do some Christmas shopping and idly tried my luck on an Amazon storecard. Didn't expect anything. Got approved anyhow! $700 credit limit. Used it extensively since then, putting lots of things on it and paying it off.
Early this year, someone told me to call BoA after I'd have the secured card for a year to get it unsecured. I was optimistic about my chances. Called them in April 2015 - my score was around a 580 at this point - and the lady reviewed my account and told me that my credit was insufficient and that even though I was consistently paying more than the minimum payment, it wasn't enough to rate unsecuring the card.
This upset me way out of proportion to anything else... it was a wake up call. So I made the conscious choice to research credit and figure out how to improve mine. Signed up for all the FAKOs but the REAL source of info was on here (thank you all for all of your advice-- you have no idea how many times an answer was on here spelled out!). Since April I have disputed, EE'd and cleaned up my reports like crazy. I estimate I've raised my score roughly 100 points - I'm hovering around a 675 (FAKO) now. I'm super stingy so I'm waiting to pull my FICOs when I really need to know/before a "real" app.
But then I went on a SCT spree last week... somehow I'd missed it these few months. I scored $500 VS, $4500+300 CLI Overstock, $2500 Sportsmans, $2500 Fuel Rewards. NOT BAD for one hard pull among it (Fuel Rewards), even if I know my AAoA is going to dip.
Then I read something today about chatting up Synchrony and wandered over to Amazon. I asked for 5000 figuring if I could even get 2k that would be awesome. The SOBs gave me 5000!!
So WITH ALL THAT BACKSTORY, back to my little secured card. It's my oldest open line of credit aside from the student loans, but now also the smallest. I am trying to figure out now if it is better to: a) leave it alone and wait for BoA to unsecure it on their own; b) leave it alone period and not worry about it; c) do a combo and wait for a set amount of months to call BoA. I even toyed with the idea of upping the credit limit manually by adding another deposit.
My TU has 5 inqs counting the one BoA pulled for the review earlier this year. I have a very large collection falling off in March of next year which is also my last derog on TU; it's a repo and I am planning on buying a car after that clears out, since I'm sure my auto-enhance sucks with it on there right now. Not sure how it will impact how BoA's view on my credit, though I am guessing having 0 derogs is better than having the 6 that were on there when they looked at it in April!
Whew, that was a lot just to ask about this. Anyhow... what do you guys think? Anyone out there with experience with BoA secured and rebuilding? (I'm also not sure if I should have posted this to rebuilding instead of credit cards, now that I think about it....) Should I wait for BoA -- will they unsecure it in due time via SP review? Or should I close it since it's a toy limit compared to most of my others now? Or am I just getting eaten up over nothing and I should just ignore it?
ETA: thx JustMe3 for bringing my lingo into line, lol-- 'graduation', that's it!
