When to apply and what to apply for?

[Revelate]

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@Asailorshort wrote:
Hmm no forex fee on nfcu? I'm intrigued. (usaa has 1% forex fee which i felt was pretty good). Am not an nfcu member but am eligible. Will having a regular banking acct with them help my app any? I may set up a savings acct with them anyway as they have good interest rate offers for auto and mortgage loans. May apply for old navy too for back to school shopping savings. Want a target card too but will be moving in a couple months which is when I would anticipate larger purchases from them. Am anxious to be done with credit hunting and move on to gardening. Although we don't have an exact month pegged, we want to buy a home in Vegas before prices and interest rates increase too much but ideally all my inqs would be over a year before we start the mortgage process.

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You have to be a member anyway to apply for anything, might as well setup the accounts with it.  Checking/savings account certainly wouldn't hurt in addition to anything else for establishing your relationship there.

I don't say this about any lender, and actually NFCU is about the only one that I will in all of known human existence: if you have access, take it, and don't look back.  You will not regret it, at all.  Also, if you need a forex card, that 0% is a non-trivial thing compared to 1%.

Longer term that NFCU account will help you a lot more than either Target or Old Navy, though admittedly it's worth doing the math on how much you expect to spend at Old Navy / Target vs. their rewards structure vs. their fees (if any).  In any event, it's to your benefit to get things opened tout suite and get the new tradeline / inquiry penalties to your FICO out of the way and healing immediately for maximum time between them and whenever your expected mortgage drops.

[Asailorshort]

Thanks! I've applied for and received a usaa visa as well as a target and old navy account. I've also joined nfcu and will be applying for the flagship sig visa once my info arrives in snail mail. Since nfcu ran a hp just to open the savings acct I am hoping they don't have to do another hp to approve cc app. After I get that card, I'll be spending at least a year in the garden. Now I just have 2 accts with lates (2-30s ans 1-60) that fall off by jan 2013 and a chase CO from 2009 that I need to GW. I pulled my eq fico from here today and it's 672 (up 5 pts from May .. Was hoping for more but aren't we all!) with the lates falling off and the new accts aging am hoping to be in the 700 club in jan 2013 (and hopefully mid-700s if I can get the CO removed).

[rootpooty]

if usaa gave you a 4k limit im betting nfcu will go higher.

[thatoneguy28]

personally i would apply for NFCU.i have been a member for a couple months now and i love them.customer service is great plus i was able to get their cashrewards,gorewards,and platinum cards all with high limits. im also rebuilding my credit as well.

[JusdoNit]

Congrats.  Now I know which card to start with first after mortgage is done.

[Asailorshort]

On phone with nfcu and awaiting response for flagship signature visa and the verdict is ......................................... Anxiously waiting ............................ She's summarizing and submitting ................................................... Now submitted and waiting for ............. Approved for 25 thousand!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'n at 13.9% (but I pay in full every month anyway)! Holy shiznet! Soooooooo happy it's hard not to curse like a sailor right now! FYI, I got this with a fico of 672 and 3 recent (like 1 wk ago) inquiries. I have one major derog (co from 1 yr 9 months ago .... Awaiting gw) and a couple of 30 days late fm 6.5+ yrs ago. I have been in the navy for quite a while and I'm stationed in a high cost of livin area, which increases my pay and therefor my poss cl. Did I say holy crap yet? Wow! After years of not using credit at all after getting in too much post-divorce debt, I found this forum and found out I needed to have and use credit to rebuild. So in march 2012 I applied for an orchard/HSBC mc, got approved for $500 limit. Now a few months later and more confident, I app'd for a usaa rewards visa (4k limit) and now the 25k nfcu flagship visa. ...... And now it's time to take my super happy butt to the garden for the next year!