Repair With Student Loans and/or Secured CC

[Anonymous]

I'm in the process of repaying my loans and want a quick improvement to my scores. Is repaying the loans enough or should I look into secured credit cards? Thanks.

[Anonymous]

If you have no credit cards (revolving debt) and only the loans (installment debt) in your file, then yes, a secured card could definitely help - it will add a revolving line to your file.

As long as you are paying on your loans as agreed, and the balances are lower than they started out (as assumedly they must be if you've been paying on them for any amount of time), using your extra cash on hand to get a secured card would probably be the better idea, FICO score-wise.

With a credit file that thin (again, assuming the student loans are all that you have in there), secured is probably your only option right now, but if you can get in with Bank of America or maybe even Discover, they are known to graduate their secured cards into unsecured ones if you pay on time and handle it well for a year or so.

[JustinA]

Cap platinum may work too

[Anonymous]

Thanks so much for the tips. I do have two items in collections. Would the secured credit card offset those in any way?

[RobertEG]

Are you simply paying on student loans, or are you paying on student loans that are in default?

The relevance is that there are programs for dealing with rehab of student loans, so if they are in default and thus part of your current score woes, you should look into those programs for addressing both their repayment and removal of prior derogs.