CLI on secured cards

[iwannapool]

I'm working on mine and hubby's credit. For his credit (which must improve for us to get a mortgage, because he earns most of the money) the worst part is the LACK of credit. I sent of for a couple of secured cards and we also put $10,000 in a cd and borrowed against it for a car. I set it up on a 12 payments.

Anyway, I was wondering if raising the credit limit on the secured cards(i.e. adding more to the savings securing it) would have the same effect as a regular cards limit increasing? Also, what do you guys think is an optimal amount to begin with? I did $1,000 on each card.

[iwannapool]

Should probably put this in a different post...but:

I know we took an additional hit on scores because we initially applied for a mortgage with one company and they druuuuuuggggg out the final NO for almost two months. So when we finally got a no we applied at several other places. I know we took a hit on that. When we got no's from them we sent out for the secured cards. We also did the loan against the CD with one of the banks that had already pulled for a mortgage, so they didn't re-pull.

I guess my question is, is there anything I can do about the multiple mortgage pulls?

[llecs]

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@iwannapool wrote:

I guess my question is, is there anything I can do about the multiple mortgage pulls?

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For FICO scoring purposes, and to give you a chance to rate-shop for a better deal, FICO will ignore all but one mortgage inquiry if your mortgage inquiries were pulled inside a given time frame. That time frame varies by CRA and FICO score version, but it is generally between 14-45 days. In other words, you can apply 50 times for a mortgage inside of two weeks. FICO will ignore 49 of those inquiries and only score one 1. TU98 (same TU FICO as one here) is 14 days. The newer TU04, which is what your lender likely used is either 30 or 45 days. Mose mortgage lenders will use Beacon 5.0 (same as on here) and that for sure is 30 days. And I'm not sure about EX FICO, but I think it is at least 30 days. Oh, and any ding assuming you had one (most of my inquiries have never hurt my FICO) won't be felt until that window expires.

[iwannapool]

I did see one other post where the person said they kept sending a few hundred dollars more every few months to increase the credit limit on their secured credit cards and it substancially raised their credit scores.

Has anyone else tried this? I know if you have a credit card and THEY increase your limit it raises scores, so just wondering if MIGHT work the same way with a secured card?

Like the name says I wanna be in a my own house (with a pool, LOL) as soon as possible!

[iwannapool]

And I meant add, no the mortgage pulls were NOT done within that time frame. I think it was close to 60 days before the first guy finally said NO.

[PixieQueen80]

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@iwannapool wrote:

And I meant add, no the mortgage pulls were NOT done within that time frame. I think it was close to 60 days before the first guy finally said NO.

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I think what is important about the credit limit is how much of it your using.  In an ideal situation you want to keep your balance under 10% so if you have a credit card with a $300 limit with a $50 balance then you are at 16.5% whereas if you had a card with a limit of $500 with a balance of $50 you would be at 10%.  In the case of the $300 card then a credit limit increase would definately help because you ultization would more than likely go up and the balance become a smaller percentage of the credit limit.