Approved for DCU car refi and DCU and NFCU credit cards today. How to optimize my credit with them?

[jg1983]

I had an interesting day today. Yesterday I was denied for a car refi through NFCU. Today I called DCU (who I have my direct deposit with) and applied for a car refi for the second time this month. The last time I had a collections account and now it's gone. They told me I was denied. I then asked about a credit card and they ran an application for a credit card. The rep came back and said i was approved for a $1000 credit card and on top of that the loan officer who did the credit card application looked at my car refi application and approved it for me at 9.5% (I pay 16% right now). I couldn't believe it. After 6 months cleaning up my credit and trying for a refi I am finally approved. And I have a credit card on top of it. I then called NFCU to see if they could do a credit card application on my credit pull for the car refi. They couldn't so I rolled the dice and applied anyways. I was approved for a $1600 cash rewards card. Now i have a car refi and 2 credit cards so i am feeling better about my credit situation. One thing I am wondering about is will DCU be willing to look at my credit situation in the future and adjust my car refi interest rate accordingly? 9.5% is a huge savings for me but I would still like to get it lower down the road if possible.

What I want to do now is use those 2 cards in a way that will optimize my credit the most and I have no idea how to do it because i have limited experience with credit cards. I am tempted to take those two cards and max them out to pay for the engine I need for my car but even though I can pay them back in full over a few months that will tank my credit. A better option is to use them to build my credit so i can get a personal loan or a higher credit limit so i can pay for the engine without maxing them out. Any advice on this would be appreciated. Also I have read about people getting the credit limit raised on their NFCU cards without too much difficulty. Any advice on this?

I will say both DCU and NFCU are very good credit unions as far as i can tell. Both of them took the time to give me advice on building my credit and told me what I should do to improve my odds when I was denied for loans. Most places i have dealt with for loans tell you to wait for the letter in the mail if your denied and have any questions and that's the end of it. Both DCU and NFCU seem like good credit unions for people building credit. I can't decide which one to use as my primary account. Probably DCU because i get my direct deposit a day early.

[Anonymous]

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@jg1983 wrote:

I can't decide which one to use as my primary account. Probably DCU because i get my direct deposit a day early.

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I can't speak to DCU as I only have an NFCU account, but based on my NFCU experience, I feel certain you made the right choice.  The people at NFCU are the best, as you described always helpful and polite.  Their technology however is among the slowest of any financial institution I have ever dealt with.  It once took 5 days to clear a cash deposit at a shared branch.  yes, you read that right - 5 days to clear CASH.  Bank transfers are always slow as well, and for some reason I can't pull funds on their side, only push to other banks.

So yea - NFCU - great people, bad tech

[jg1983]

I thought it was interesting the different ways the 2 CUs process credit applications. DCU always put me on hold and had a live person review the application. NFCU on the other hand has a computer make an instant decision and if your denied it's final. I called NFCU back about the car refi and requested a person look at my application. I was told it would have to go through the computer system first. They put it through the computer again and it came up denied again. I was told since the computer denied it it wasn't possible to have a person review it. NFCU may be good for people with credit issues and their staff is friendly and helpful but if the computer denies your application your out of luck. DCU on the other hand has live people look at the application who can over ride the computers decision. It may have been different for the NFCU credit card I was approved for. Instead of getting an instant decision they put me on hold so maybe a live person looks at credit card applications but not car refi applications.