Big secured card or many small ones?

[ImprovingYouth]

Background info

I am 21 y/o with a credit score around 575 (Equifax.com), I currently have one secured credit card with my credit union for $500 that has been open for over a year (13months) with on-time payments. I recently (July) opened a credit card with Credit One for $300 CL. That was increased to $400 CL after 2 months of on-time payments.

Baddies

My report has some baddies, my student loans reported one 90 late on 2 accounts, due to a miscommunication. They have been open over 3 years  with on time payments for everything else(now has 6 total accounts all reporting for deferrment as I am in school). Additionally when I was 18 I was tricked into opening a Kay jewelers account, which has 2 30-day lates on it (about 2 years ago), which has since been closed but still reports on time payments every month. Lastly I have a court record for a judgement that has been paid. I have approximately 10 inquries in the last 2 years,only 2 being in this last year.

Goals

My score seems to be going up over the last year very slighly but not nearly as much as I would hope, as I believe it was 550ish around that time. I am now working full time making about 30k (about 65k adding in my wife's income) a year while attending school full time, and I am hoping to reach around 620+ so that I can app for a mortgage with my wife in December.

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Now for the actual questions....

I will soon have a good amount of money saved up (about 5k) and I am not planning on spending it any time soon. Should I use this money to increase my secured card to the max of 5k, or should I do a secured loan or something like that? What else could I do to use this to increase my score as much as possible with this money? Should I open SEVERAL secured CC with various banks, etc. or would the big limit be better?

Second I have been looking into a lot of Student Visa CC, are there any that you guys should suggest me apping for that might give me a shot or should I hold everything to not get any more inq?

Thanks!

[Wolf3]

IMO,  1 large secured card is better than many small ones.    You could consider 2 secured cards and spilt it, which is almost as good.   But I would only do that if you want to establish a long term relationship with that bank/CU.

[ImprovingYouth]

Ok, yeah I prefer my credit union, but will probably go towards somewhere with better CD, MM, savigns rates dwon the line, but for now I actually despise banks lol. Would having 3 cards opposed to having 2 cards make much of a difference?

[Wolf3]

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@ImprovingYouth wrote:

Ok, yeah I prefer my credit union, but will probably go towards somewhere with better CD, MM, savigns rates dwon the line, but for now I actually despise banks lol. Would having 3 cards opposed to having 2 cards make much of a difference?

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I used 3 cards to rebuild, but I needed the first card to help get the next 2 secured cards.  But, I don't think 3 vs 2 is any better for builidng credit.   I do think bigger deposits is better, sometimes it helps get better CL later, and it never hurst.

[llecs]

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@ImprovingYouth wrote:

Goals

My score seems to be going up over the last year very slighly but not nearly as much as I would hope, as I believe it was 550ish around that time. I am now working full time making about 30k (about 65k adding in my wife's income) a year while attending school full time, and I am hoping to reach around 620+ so that I can app for a mortgage with my wife in December.

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OP, I wouldn't open up any more credit. I'd take the money and save it for the home-to-be. You can certainly hit into the high 700s/low 800s with what you have, minus the baddies. I'd focus my effort on removing those through legit repair means. GW like crazy.

[ImprovingYouth]

Oh, I forgot to mention, I have already mailed/emailed several GW to these guys, Kay jewelers wont remove anything, and my student loans are through Sallie Mae DoE and they stated some law that prevents them from doing anything. Last thing I'm still disputing is the judgement, and Ive been told by the court they would not have released the info to the CRA and I'm pretty sure the people who sued me didn't so they probably will have a hard time verifying the info.

[ryanbush]

just adding more cards is going to lower your score (lowering AAoA) and increasing your credit limit is going to have little to no affect on your score unless you have utilization problems, which it sounds like you don't, and if you do you need to use that 5k to pay off your credit card(s)

do you have any open collections?

the only way increasing your credit limit is going to help you is if you are applying for another credit card and hoping for a higher initial limit.

my best advise would be to keep your utilization on credit cards below 9% and just let time run it's course, there is nothing you can really do outside of lowering your utilization and adding AAoA to your credit report that will make your scores go up... 

just keeping paying on time and quit applying for credit and your score will go up over time, it's unlkely there is anything you can do in the short term to raise your scores out side of getting the negative information removed (gw letters)

[ImprovingYouth]

No collections what-so-ever.

And I always have kept my credit cards below 9% usually i PIF every month, but this last month I purposely got the balance up to around 70% so that I could use the next 2 months and pay it down to like 5% at november which hopefully will help bring it up a bit rather than just continueing to show the same balance on my CR every month....

Yeah, I feel like I'm just at a wall and can't really do a thing to increase my credit score...

[Wolf3]

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@ImprovingYouth wrote:

No collections what-so-ever.

And I always have kept my credit cards below 9% usually i PIF every month, but this last month I purposely got the balance up to around 70% so that I could use the next 2 months and pay it down to like 5% at november which hopefully will help bring it up a bit rather than just continueing to show the same balance on my CR every month....

Yeah, I feel like I'm just at a wall and can't really do a thing to increase my credit score...

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Carrying a balance over a few months and paying interest is of no help and costs you money. 

There is not a lot you can do to make big improvements to your scroe in 3 months.   That $5K might best be used for a bigger downpayment.    Bigger downpayments can help with approval and terms.

[ryanbush]

do you have a car load, or any other type of installment loan?

the might be the only thing you can do to raise your score, but i'm afraid the inquiry and hit on your AAoA might not be worth it