Credit

[Anonymous]

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@SouthJamaica wrote:

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Did you clear that with us first?

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You crack me up, buddy.  :-)

[Anonymous]

Yeah I also thought it was the history might wait a bit more to apply for another card.

and that i know the quicksilver rewards card doesnt have annual fee is the other quick silver ONE rewards that is like 40$ a year.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

So the reports you get from ACR is kinda the same as credit karma where i can see the accounts i have under each 3 credit company.

Is FICO 8 another word for your credit score.

Thanks for the replies

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Keep working with the folks here, who can help you out.  I am going on vacation soon  and will likely be out of the forum for two weeks.

While you work on the details, I also really suggest you get help on understanding the "big picture" stuff, the bird's eye view at a high level.  Otherwise you will misunderstand detail-oriented advice because you don't have the right framework to park it in. 

To get you started, make sure you understand what a report is vs. a score.  The report will be a big list of all your accounts, that tells your history with them and what your current balance is and stuff like that.  It's a big long list, where each item on the list is a different account.  There will be some additional info on the report, like for example whether you have applied recently for credit (inquiries).  There are three different companies that house this kind of data on you: Equifax (EQ), Experian (EX), and TransUnion (TU) so you have three different reports.

Karma will give you a report on EQ and TU as often as once a week.  I indicated another place to get a free monthly EX report.  CCT gives you all three reports for a $1.  Etc.  It is incredibly important to learn how to print and read your reports -- and not to rely solely on what your score is (see below).

The score is different from the report.  It is a single number, typically between 300 and 850.  Two big groups make credit scores: Vantage and FICO.  You can ignore the Vantage scores because few lenders use them.  The score is the result of a computer program taking all the information in your report and spitting out that single number.

FICO makes a number of families of scoring models.  The one that will matter to you is FICO 8.  You can ignore everything else for a while until you have learned a lot more about scores.  The link I gave you for EX will give you a free FICO 8 and CCT is a good place to get your FICO 8 score too.

Keep working with the folks here, keep learning about reports and learn how to read and understand yours each month.  The folks here can help you with both big picture stuff and details: do both.  Good luck...

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Thanks for this really want to raise and maintain and good credit. Plan on sticky around for a while

[Anonymous]

Kjohn1 wrote:

As joesef said, try not to just cold app, try to prequalify first. Here is a site with all of the major prequal pages: https://www.doctorofcredit.com/view-personalized-credit-card-offers/  Just remember that not all prequals are created equal. For example BoA and Discover can be misleading, or outright worthless. Look for a solid APR (14%, not 10.99-17.99) and the words qualified or prequalified on your offer. If it says something like 'we suggest....' or 'based on your interests...' it's not a good offer. Additionally, even if it pops up with a solid offer, it could change once they run your credit, but more often than not it doesn't. 

I'd suggest reading on here how each prequal site works, so you know what to look for and what to avoid, before doing it. Just search each card with something like 'Discover prequalify` and it should pull up informative results.

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I tend not to worry about the apr right now because I plan on paying everything on time.

And the APR only applies if i dont pay my balance by the monthly due date, right?

[HeavenOhio]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I tend not to worry about the apr right now because I plan on paying everything on time

And the APR only applies if i dont pay my balance by the monthly due date, right?

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Right. When it comes to card usage, don't worry about the APR amount unless you're not going to be paying your statement balance by the due date. Because I pay in full too, getting a low APR isn't a priority for me.

However, that's not why APR is being brought up here. On some of the pre-qual sites — Capital One, Chase, and AMEX in particular — the APR that's given can help you determine how solid the pre-qualification is. If you see an exact APR (e.g. 17%) or a narrow range (16–18%), pre-quals on those sites are generally considered solid, and your approval odds should be good. If you see a wide APR range (e.g. 12–24%), consider it to be advertising rather than a solid pre-qual.