When to open second card + A few rebuilding credit Q's

[Anonymous]

Hello everyone! This board has been very helpful with me mapping out my road to credit recovery thus far!  I just received my Discover It Secured card and am getting excited about improving my credit.  

As for background...

During my younger years I accumlated debt in the form of credit cards, student loans, and phone/internet bills. I had my first credit card bill drop off my credit report, the second drops off in four months, all loans are closed with no balance....and all that's left is a delinquint phone bill and an internet bill.

My TU score is 486 currently.

What would should I plan to do as far as my next step.  Should I apply for another secured card? If so, when is a good time to do that? Should I space that out or just take all the inquiry dings at once? Or should I focus on resolving my deliquencies?

[Anonymous]

Hey there! I'm new to this forum but i have some knowledge to share

First i'd like to ask. What are your credit goals? this would help to determine what type of advice to give. i.e. are you trying to get a loan for a car, home, personal use in a specific amount of time?

if you are just generally trying to build up your credit to a better score and have some time (2 years) to do so i say apply for anothe secured card asap. put as much money possible onto these cards so that your limits are higher (when you have at least 2500 of revolving credit you get bumped up to the next notch of credit grading level --- for FICO purposes) ... work these 2 cards for 6 months at least or more (if the negs on your credit file will take longer than 6 months to fall off due to SOL do not apply for anything else until they fall off unless they wont fall off until like 2 years from now...) after the baddies are off and you have at least 6 months of history with less than 10% utilization reporting apply for a cap one card, quicksilver1 Mastercard 

when you are nearing 5-6 months from the natural SOL fall off date for the bad accounts on your credit reports dipute them as obsolete ... lots of people have luch with this...

this is all the info i can give without knowing more about your particular circumstance ... Live Long and Prosper!

[Anonymous]

If you can afford to load up another secured card I would recommend doing it. The earlier you get another card the better since you want average age of accounts to be as high as possible down the line. Try to find a secured card that graduates if possible. The inquiry will have a very small short term impact but it will be better long term.

As for the collections I would look them over and see if any information is wrong on their listing. Even if nothing is you can still dispute the accounts and have success. In my experiences several utility companies will not respond to disputes so they will be removed. Just google how to dispute with each bureau and follow the process. Good luck increasing your scores!