Your Newest Rookie

[Anonymous]

I have been lurking around this forum for about a week and decided to register. This is an awesome online community with very helpful people and I wanted to be a part of it.

I currently have a 600 EX and in the process of building it back up like the many people on this forum. I have 2 quick questions for the more seasoned members.

1) I was recently approved  for the Capital One Secured CC with an initial deposit of $100.  My question is if I put $2,000 as a security deposit with Capital One will they report my available credit of $2,000 to all 3?. If so I believe it would be beneficial to my particular circumstance due to the fact that I only have 1 other unsecured CC with Orchard bank with a $300 limit and a $200 balance.

2) My father currently has an AMEX with about a 35k limit. If I was to become an AU on his account, will my CR reflect a 35k available credit? thus strengthening my available credit and credit score?

Thanks in advance everyone, I look forward to the time where I can help out the new guy.

[guiness56]

Welcome!

Did you get your EX score from a lender and/or creditor?

I believe that if you put $2000 that is what will be reported. 

You really need to get your Orchard card balance down.  It is at the point FICO may look at it as maxed out and that is another ding.

If you become AU you will assume everything about the card, the history, the limit, age and the lates, if there are any, which you don't want.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for you r reply!

I got my EX score from freecreditreport.com, and signed up for their credit monitoring service (6 Months now), I'm actually happy with the service. I do need to pull all 3 sometime soon.  I signed up with The Credit People recently after a 117 point decrease in my score since last October that flipped me out. I guess I'll wait until they pull them and post them to my account.

I'll have my Orchard Bank CC balanced paid off completely before they report next month, hopefully there will be a slight rise in my score. 

[guiness56]

I am not sure how the monitoring works at freecreditreport.com but I do know the score they gave you is NOT a real FICO score.  EX stopped selling their score to the consumer in Feb 2009.  The only place you can get it is through a creditor/lender.

You can get both your FICOs for TU and EQ on myFICO.  EQ does still sell their FICO but it hard to work your way through the system to find it.

You can get a free copy from each CRA every 12 months from annualcreditreport.com. 

FICO does not like to see all CC with a 0 balance.  One of them need to report at 9% or below.