Credit Cards

[keryan]

Hi all,

I have a thin file (no credit history at all, in fact) and an 8 year old checking account. If I open another acount (ING Direct Electric Orange checking) before applying for my first card, will it affect my credit score or any other criteria (AAOA?) used to evaluate CC applications?

Thanks

[tinuviel]

You may want to ask if they pull a CR to open an account. Sometimes opening a checking account might result in an inq, but it won't be factored into your AAoA, as checking/savings accounts don't appear on your credit reports.

[Repo-ed]

no

[keryan]

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tinuviel wrote:

You may want to ask if they pull a CR to open an account. Sometimes opening a checking account might result in an inq, but it won't be factored into your AAoA, as checking/savings accounts don't appear on your credit reports.

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My understanding is that ING does perfom a hard inquiry for Electric Orange accounts. From what I've read a hard pull affects your score for 6-12 months - if I want to apply for a card during that period, and given my lack of credit history to date, would it be better to forgo the Electric Orange for now? The $125 Black Friday bonus would be nice but building credit is more important to me in the long run.

Thanks again

[navigatethis12]

Do you plan on applying for a card, loan, or mortgage any time soon? If not, then do not worry about the inquiry. Even if you are, one inquiry will not be a big deal. $125 is not that great a bonus, but it is the best I have seen them offer, so you should go for it if you want the account. Short history will hurt you more than the inquiry and the only way to solve that is time.

You actually do not have a score at all if you have no credit. The eight year old account will not show on your reports and neither will the ING Direct account.

[mikka1]

I have no firm evidence of this, but I can intuitively assume that the whole fact of having a checking account with a certain bank will help in the only case (if at all) of applying for a card of that bank. At least I used that fact of having a 4-yr old checking account relationship with BofA while trying to recon their denial for a credit card not a long ago and apparently it worked. I also opened a Cap1 checking account around 6 months before applying for my first credit card from Cap1 which was also a success, though I have no proof that this was taken into consideration in the credit decision making process.

As mentioned previously, checking accounts are not listed in your credit report, so I doubt having an account with Chase would help you to get Citibank credit card (just as an example)...