Best way to use secured CC

[cgreer72]

My first post, be gentle.....

What is the best way to use a secured credit card to improve my FICO? Should I charge a little and PIF each month, or should I pay some and let the rest ride for a couple of months, paying monthly and on time, of course. I just applied yesterday with Capital one and got approved with a $49 deposit. Which leads to my other question...... is a lower deposit good or bad? Does that mean I'm more of a risk because I had a lower deposit?

[flowerutah]

My lender told me to use the balance and pay it back off with our next paycheck which is every two weeks, I don't know if this is true or not but this is what we are going to do with our public savings secured CC, I'm hoping the credit points goes up pretty good ...

[Wolf3]

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@cgreer72 wrote:

My first post, be gentle.....

What is the best way to use a secured credit card to improve my FICO? Should I charge a little and PIF each month, or should I pay some and let the rest ride for a couple of months, paying monthly and on time, of course. I just applied yesterday with Capital one and got approved with a $49 deposit. Which leads to my other question...... is a lower deposit good or bad? Does that mean I'm more of a risk because I had a lower deposit?

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I would use it like any other card.   Use as much of the balance as you want.   PIF each month to avoid interest.     No advantage to letting it ride.    Never go over limit, Never be late.  

Biigger deposit allows more use to establish a level of spending.   I think deposit should be somewhat representative of what you want later.    Capital One is very easy to add to deposit whenever you want.   They take 2 weeks before it shows on your CL.   And they give unsecured CL on top of secured.   What is your CL with the $49 deposit?

[cgreer72]

I recieved a $200 CL.

[vish1]

As you have a low CL, please be very careful about your CL

The best strategy will be to keep most of your CL available at all times (if you can afford to). If you need to pay every day or 2 to keep most of your limit available feel free to do that. Let the satement report something less than 20$ and then PIF as soon as you can.