@Anonymous wrote:Sub, I am honestly suprised to see another post about you ragging on SECU..... if you seem to hate SECUMD so much just cancel their card? I am 19 so we are very near in age and as of now I am approaching $100k in available credit as someone who is UNDER 21, I believe your problem is that you take to these forums to blow issues out of proportion, at least that is how it seems from my perspective. I have had little issue obtaining very respected credit cards including a $30k limit from Chase, and while not being able to pre-qualify for anything is a minor annoyance (mainly only becuase I want the CSR!!!) many Prequal tools do not even work, and those that do often offer inferior cards than those that can be found elsewhere. I have not found the Card act to be a pain at all, and I like you have been living under its' rule.
Car insurance is based on many things including credit score if your state allows it, being that we are young males we will be charged the highest rates, even if I had a perfect 850 I would expect to pay a higher rate than a 35 year female mini van driver. That being said I agree with you that credit scores should not be used in setting an insurance rate.
I can't cancel secu now or else it'll destroy my thin profile. I'll wait till it gets exired on its own and hopefully my profile is tanks it better by then but until then it's under quarantine.
I think our situations have a very key difference. I was never an authorized user so I had no credit history when I applied and I felt the pain of reading a letter that said you were rejected for having no history. When you have multiple rejections you realize you have no history AND a bunch of inquiries. Then the concept of catch-22 with credit cards happens when you realize you need a credit card to build history but you can't get a card without history. SItuations like this can cause panic and in desperation bad choices can be made like getting vulture cards which prey on the people in bad situations like mine. You had Authorized User status which provided you with the history you needed when you started building credit and frankly I don't think you felt the same dread I did. Congrats on your 100k limit. I wasn't saying all this to offend you but I just don't think we make good comparisons.
Also you are right that I blow problems out of proportion. Some people go hakuna matata and others worry about the smallest thing. I tend to be one of those worrier people with a trump personality. If I don't speak out my problems and keep it in, I'll suffer internally. Therefore speaking out my problems is vital to my mental health.
What is CSR? I'd like to know about that before I comment on how annoying the age restirction on pre-qualification is.
Just because we already pay high car insurance doesn't mean we musn't do the best in our power to reduce even if by a little bit.
Thank you for your encouragement of telling me the 2009 Act situation isn't too bad for me and it does help my mood even if my argumentative paragraphs earlier in this post dont' show that.
Starting Score: Ex08-732,Eq08-713,Tu08-717
If you have positive free cash flow to the point you can drop 2K on a discover secured, just take the secured route for a year.
1) Discover secured card done
2) BOFA secured card, graduates into a solid tradeline
3) Pull the share secured loan trick that CGID alluded to
4) Wait a year and then go get the first round of cards you actually want.
This is not hard, not being able to prequalify is kinda crap anyway since inquiries are effectively irrelevant.
A little free life advice from someone further along the journey: I spent a bunch of time worried about small things in my life at one point, I wasn't happy, and they don't matter. It's not hakuna matata, it's learning not to GAF about trivial things in allusion to the somewhat recent NYT list book advocating similarly. A whole lot of the miniutiae in life is actually really not important.
Sure, setup some basic credit report stuff so that you're better off in the future, but then let it go. Kick ass in school, go meet new people, find a quality partner or at least get some additional relationship experience which is nothing but goodness later. Pick up a socially interesting hobby that gets you stories to tell, had something of an epiphany yesterday which really calls into question my pursuit of various things credit but I digress. Actually for you in particular with some of your recent theories, don't bring them here, bring them up in offline conversations and just see where it goes. College is such a fantastic time for doing such things, don't waste the time debating them on a random forum, can't win the Internet.
Focus on what's important, this stuff in the margins, isn't.
@Anonymous wrote:
@Subexistence wrote:I have a line of credit that fako considers an installment loan but I'm not sure how FICO will score it.The key question is how your credit reports are describing it (not how a rival scoring algorithm might be considering it). Do your three credit reports (TransUNion, Eqifax, and Experian) all list it as an installment loan? Is it listed as open or closed? Can you give us any more details about the account? (For example, is it a student loan? Personal loan? Auto loan? Finance company account?)
If it is a student loan, is it in deferment?
Depending on what the answers to these questions are, there is a technique we on the forum are familiar with that could easily raise your three scores by 30 points each.
Your best plan is to continue using the two credit cards you have. (The card you do not like you can use once every six months, just to keep it active.) Keep your reported utilization very low, say around 1-8%. 366 days after your last inquiry, all your inquiries will be disregarded by FICO -- from a scoring perspective, it will be as if they had never occured.
Well since my credit history is 3 months old, I don't have a FICO yet. It's a student preferred line of credit to protect from overdrafts. It's quite pointless to be offered to me since I don't even use secu as my bank. It's considered an instalmment loan and it's specifically in the other sections so it's not considered a mortgage, auto, or student loan. I was just planning to garden the LOC just because I don't want to pay any interest. If you think that technique can help then feel free to tell me but I don't think it will.
I'm only using discover. If I used my aspire visa card I could end up spending $5 on it then try to pay it back but fail. Then have it marked as late payment for as long as I live because the aspire system is designed so payments are never counted. Some people have used the card once and have it ding their accounts for years on end. It's safest to simply not use a system that doesn't accept payments.
Yeah I'll wait out the inquiries.
@Revelate wrote:If you have positive free cash flow to the point you can drop 2K on a discover secured, just take the secured route for a year.
1) Discover secured card done
2) BOFA secured card, graduates into a solid tradeline
3) Pull the share secured loan trick that CGID alluded to
4) Wait a year and then go get the first round of cards you actually want.
This is not hard, not being able to prequalify is kinda crap anyway since inquiries are effectively irrelevant.
A little free life advice from someone further along the journey: I spent a bunch of time worried about small things in my life at one point, I wasn't happy, and they don't matter. It's not hakuna matata, it's learning not to GAF about trivial things in allusion to the somewhat recent NYT list book advocating similarly. A whole lot of the miniutiae in life is actually really not important.
Sure, setup some basic credit report stuff so that you're better off in the future, but then let it go. Kick ass in school, go meet new people, find a quality partner or at least get some additional relationship experience which is nothing but goodness later. Pick up a socially interesting hobby that gets you stories to tell, had something of an epiphany yesterday which really calls into question my pursuit of various things credit but I digress. Actually for you in particular with some of your recent theories, don't bring them here, bring them up in offline conversations and just see where it goes. College is such a fantastic time for doing such things, don't waste the time debating them on a random forum, can't win the Internet.
Focus on what's important, this stuff in the margins, isn't.
Explain the BOFA card. I've never heard of it.
I still don't know about the shared secured loan trick. Could you explain it?
I had another plan. As soon as my fico score comes out, I might apply for citi preferred college student card then upgrade it to citidouble cash unless someone convinces me why citidouble cash is bad,
Most college students talk about sports rather than about credit cards.
@Anonymous wrote:THis will tell you all you need to know about the Share Secure loan technique. All you need to do is read the first 2-3 posts.
The thing is I can't think of something I'll need to loan. If I were going to make a small loan for another reason like an aparatment I would do this but I'm not willing to get a loan for something I don' t need. Like I wouldn't loan an apartment I don't need just to boost my score. The only exception is if I could somehow sell back what I ended up loaning for a reasonable price. If I was loaning a car but could sell it back for a good price it would be acceptable. However as far as I'm aware, things in general depreciate in value so unless you can think of something, I'll have to pass.
@Anonymous wrote:I am surprised that your LOC is reporting as an installment loan. I'd expect that a small LOC would report as revolving. But Revelate knows a lot more about LOCs than I do, so feel free to talk to him further about it.
I doubt anybody has any idea what's going on with it. I don't know, secu doesn't know, nerdwallet doesn't know, etc doesn't know. I expected it to be revolving credit too but I'd prefer it be installment so I can get credit mix.