CC for poor credit that gives you monthly FICO?

[Anonymous]

Hello!

Right now we're going through a credit dispute for my fiance that could take months, one tradeline from Carecredit that at the end of it all will *hopefully* be removed completely. The other two tradelines he has are an open les schwab charge account with a $0 balance (I think the reported CL is $3000) and a paid off car loan. Never has had a CC. However, because of his incredibly thin credit history, that one bad tradeline dropped his credit score almost 200 points from about 700 to the low 500's, and is still negatively affecting it until we get it taken care of. So now we're looking to open him up one (or two or three) accounts to build his credit while we deal with the legal mess of the Carecredit account. I'm willing to open joint accounts if we have to, (I have 740 FICO with all my accounts in perfect standing with low utilization, just a lot of inquiries in the past two years and wouldn't want a bunch more affecting my score) but ideally we could open him up a couple on his own, if at all possible.

We want a card(s) that is preferrably unsecured (but we'll do secured if we have to) with no annual fee, that gives you a free credit score, (so we can monitor it) like the Discover IT does. I have Discover IT and love it, just don't think he'd get approved. The APR doesn't matter because we will be PFI each month for these ones.

Any ideas? Thanks!

[Skye12329]

The only poor credit card that i know gives a Fico Score (at least i think its Fico) would be Credit One - which i would advise against since they are like vultures. I dont know for sure if they give a true Fico score.

The other option i would suggest but they dont give Fico scores would be BOA 99/500 secure card or a capital one poor credit card with a small annual fee.

One last thing if you just want a credit monitoring for him, just have him sign up for the Fico monitoring on this website. Its unfortunately not a credit card but will provide scores.

I dont know of anyone besides maybe US bank that does joint accounts and a credit union might. Sometimes Discover will offer a joint account option if they dont qualify. 

[Anonymous]

Walmart, Merrick Bank. I would also explore Capital One. Start with their pre qualifying page. Good luck!

[Anonymous]

In the low 500's; it would be difficult even to get secured cards.

Capital One gives a fairly decent score in their credit tracker...not a real FICO score used but close enough when you're in the 500's and want to track your progress.  You may be able to pre-qualify for the unsecured VISA Platinum but they also offer secured.

Merrick Bank I believe provides a real FICO but you have to be invited to get a card.

USBank includes a free Experian Plus score or whatever which will be changing to a different flavor in May...who knows what it might be.  Included with their secured card.

Walmart is one of the easiest to get cards (~600 score will do it) with a real FICO ... but of course they're issued by the same company as CareCredit and you're disputing with CareCredit so Synchrony cards will probably be a no-go in the near future.

[FiveOhFour]

How Can it be difficult to get a secured card? There is no risk, i didn't think you could be denied for a secured card as long as you deposit the money, if you don't pay your bill they dont give you the money back....no?

[sports1965]

you cant apply for a Merrick card

Invite only

[Anonymous]

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@FiveOhFour wrote:

How Can it be difficult to get a secured card? There is no risk, i didn't think you could be denied for a secured card as long as you deposit the money, if you don't pay your bill they dont give you the money back....no?

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Oh yeah, you can definitely be declined for secured cards.  Some of them won't extend them to people with a recent BK on their record, some won't extend with ANY BK, some won't extend if you've defaulted with that company in the past, some don't like a lot of inquiries (I'm looking at you, FNBO), some of them don't like recent derogs, all of them deny if you don't have an income... there are a lot of reasons why a bank will deny you even if you are putting down the collateral.

It's usually the bigger banks that will get shaky about it - BofA definitely denies, FNBO denies as I mentioned, etc.  Cap One is easier but they'll still deny under certain criteria. The ones that kind of "guarantee" it are a couple of the smaller cards like Primor, and they guarantee so long as you make enough money.

[Anonymous]

I have a checking, savings account and auto loan (opened within the last 6 months) with a local credit union that I've been with my entire life that offers a 9% APR platinum card with 1% cashback, what do you think the chances of getting approved for that would be if I added him to my checking account and we applied jointly?

EDIT: Also, We're in our early 20's and make about 60k combined a year.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

In the low 500's; it would be difficult even to get secured cards.

Capital One gives a fairly decent score in their credit tracker...not a real FICO score used but close enough when you're in the 500's and want to track your progress.  You may be able to pre-qualify for the unsecured VISA Platinum but they also offer secured.

Merrick Bank I believe provides a real FICO but you have to be invited to get a card.

USBank includes a free Experian Plus score or whatever which will be changing to a different flavor in May...who knows what it might be.  Included with their secured card.

Walmart is one of the easiest to get cards (~600 score will do it) with a real FICO ... but of course they're issued by the same company as CareCredit and you're disputing with CareCredit so Synchrony cards will probably be a no-go in the near future.

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Fico 08 Bankcard score for Merrick. Correct that an invite is required for the unsecured version, but one can apply directly for the secured version.

[Anonymous]

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@sports1965 wrote:

you cant apply for a Merrick card

Invite only

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You can apply for the secured version.