Hello everyone, recently got interested in the credit score game and luckily, being previously 100% ignorant, had no prior screw ups. Theres a ton of good information on these boards and I'm on my way to building a good credit profile.
My wife, on the other hand, says she doesn't 'believe' in the usefulness of credit or the importance of credit scores(we're still young and dumb, when it comes mortgage time she'll understand why people stress over this stuff!). I opened a CreditKarma account with her information just to get an idea of where her credit history is.
Kohl's Charge account - 300 limit unused for 2 years
Kay Jewelers account - 400 limit unused for 2 years
Weisfield Jewelers account - closed due to 2 years inactivity
USBank Credit Card - closed by consumer with $441 balance, 300 limit
and 2 utility bills in collections
And a bunch of denied Sterling inquiries. Apparently she just accepted CC offers for discounts at the register before I met her, bah!
She had no idea about the Kohl's or Kay cards. We recently went in to Kohl's, got her account number from their CS desk, and used it to update her info, order a new card, and make a small purchase which we immediately PIF'd. While updating her account info I hit the CLI button and they raised her limit to $700. Cool. We plan on doing the same thing with her Kay Jeweler card.
So I have 2 questions:
1. The Kohl's and Kay cards both report on CK as 'charge' accounts. Does this mean they are traditional 'charge' cards like AMEX(IE PIF every month)? I did a bit of searching on here and google and it looks like Kohl's and Kay only offer CREDIT accounts. I checked my own CK report and my 2 CC's report as 'Credit Card'.
2. I plan on sending PFD letters for the 2 utility bills. Is it normal to ask a bank for PFD(USBank in this instance)? Should I just pay the outstanding balance and settle for that?
Thank you for any and all input, and thank you for teaching me so much from past posts!
