Credit Cards

[discernment]

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Fresh101 wrote:

Thanks for the reply Decernment, but this card offers a deposit up to $5000 and I only opened it with $300 as my understanding to credit building, it doesn't matter the amount of the credit account. Does it change in my situation, as I don't have that much on the credit line limit? Thanks again

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It depends on whether you are focusing on your creditors -- OR whether you are focusing on FICO®. 

With FICO® -- having your credit cards report as being "secured" doesn't matter.  FICO® doesn't make any judgment between secured/unsecured.

But, I found, with creditors -- funding the maximum limit possible on the "secured" credit card helped to diminish whatever stigma there may be for having a credit card that reports as "secured."  And, when I applied for unsecured credit cards, the creditors matched the current limit of $5,000 of the secured credit cards for starting limits on the unsecured cards.  YMMV but, funding the secured cards with the maximum amount possible HELPED in my situation. 

[Fresh101]

Ok everyone, completely understood all the response. Thanks

[cashnocredit]

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discernment wrote:

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Fresh101 wrote:

Thanks for the reply Decernment, but this card offers a deposit up to $5000 and I only opened it with $300 as my understanding to credit building, it doesn't matter the amount of the credit account. Does it change in my situation, as I don't have that much on the credit line limit? Thanks again

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It depends on whether you are focusing on your creditors -- OR whether you are focusing on FICO®. 

With FICO® -- having your credit cards report as being "secured" doesn't matter.  FICO® doesn't make any judgment between secured/unsecured.

But, I found, with creditors -- funding the maximum limit possible on the "secured" credit card helped to diminish whatever stigma there may be for having a credit card that reports as "secured."  And, when I applied for unsecured credit cards, the creditors matched the current limit of $5,000 of the secured credit cards for starting limits on the unsecured cards.  YMMV but, funding the secured cards with the maximum amount possible HELPED in my situation. 

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Helped in my situation as well. I have a 25k WE MC, Amex Plat, and Visa Siggy. 3.5 years ago I only had baddies and no cards.

Oh, ahd the best part of WF is that when they eventually unsecure, they don't do a Hhard pull.

[DaveSignal]

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discernment wrote:

And, when I applied for unsecured credit cards, the creditors matched the current limit of $5,000 of the secured credit cards for starting limits on the unsecured cards.  YMMV but, funding the secured cards with the maximum amount possible HELPED in my situation. 

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+1  I have experienced this too.  By starting out with a decent deposit to put a bigger credit lmit on a secured I opened for rebuilding, I was soon after approved for unsecured cards with higher limits.

[Dolemite]

I know this is an old thread, but I opened a $500 secured credit card with my credit union about a month ago and when I just checked my score and report on EliminateIDtheft, it showed up as "Secured Credit Card" AND wasn't even listed with my two other credit cards under revolving accounts. Instead, it's under a Misc. Category because the CRA is unable to determine what kind of an account it is. When I first signed up, I was told that it'd report as a regular credit card, so as you can imagine, I'm a little pissed off about this. Not really sure what I could do to get it to show under credit cards, but I'll definitely bring this up with the CU.

[cashnocredit]

Could be just eliminateIDTheft. I've never had any reports, either directly from the CRA or through a thrid party call them anything other than the typical "revolving credit card" type account.  That is is secured is usually just in the written comments.

Pull from MyFICO or someone else and see if it reports the same way. You may have an anomoly.

[webhopper]

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Fresh101 wrote:

When should I expect increase score? I was already on the 658 in Eq and believe it also went down. I was planing on placing an application with a lender to buy my first house and now this happen. How can I improve my score quickly? I am asking as many people after getting a CL it reflect as a credit jump but not in my case.

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This is why the myfico community rarely recommends for its members to apply for a credit card if they have a mortgage on the horizon... unfortunately a new card can sometimes do more harm than good. I'm afraid you've set yourself back. Keep in mind that increasing the deposit to 1k will help you over time with getting larger limits. Best advice is that you keep the balance low on this card or; don't use it at all. Good luck!

Edit: I just realized that this is an old thread. My apologies. To cashnocredit; give it some time... it may be that the initial report to the bureaus did not contain the right coding to put the account in the right bucket. Besides; you will still be building a relationship with the CU which will help you out in the long run

[Dolemite]

I looked into it a bit more and realized what happened. But I'm still pissed... So back in September before I applied for the secured card, I had done a change of address. The address on my bank account was updated properly, but the credit card department still had the old address. So they sent the new card to the old address. When I got tired of waiting for it, I called them up and they said they would cancel the card that was sent to the old address and resend a new card to my new address. So what I saw on my credit report was actually the closed ("lost/stolen" as they reported it) credit card. It shows the same way on Equifax's report and on EliminateIDTheft. The replacement card has yet to report to any of the CRAs.

Seeing as the way AAoA is calculated, wouldn't this closed account negatively impact my credit AAoA as it's only a month old? I called my CU to try to get them to remove the line entirely, but they wouldn't budge. They also wouldn't remove the "Secured Credit Card" line from the comments section for future reports (Long shot, but had to try it!).

What threw me off when I first looked at the tradeline was the fact that the first 12 digits of the credit card account number listed on the TL were the exact same as the new card I received in the mail. They obviously XXXX the last for digits, so I was convinced that was my new credit card showing as closed and secured.

[Revelate]

Actually with the way AAoA is calculated (it *only* goes off the opening date, the closing date is absolutely irrelevant) whether an account is open or closed it makes no difference.

While you may have not gotten the tradeline seasoning benefit (FICO appears to like longer tradelines); the lost/stolen label is so common these days that it's likely the most minor reason for any replacement card.  I wouldn't worry about it, 99.9% chance it doesn't even come up if you have to ever do a manual review.

[Dolemite]

That's what I was hoping for. It would seem ridiculous for every lost/cancelled credit card to completely throw your record off.

Thanks for the replies!