topic Re: Secured Discover and Citi Bank CC’s in Credit Cards

Secured Discover and Citi Bank CC’s

soxfaininfl — Sun, 06 Oct 2019 04:04:42 GMT

Hi Everyone,

I would like to get back with Discover and Citi Bank. I included them both in my bankruptcy chapter 7. I was discharged back on December of 2016. My current scores are Ex 695, TU 677 and Exp 685.

I do have 12 hard inquiries with Exp in the last 2 years, 7 with TU and 5 with EX. I have opened 13 new accounts in the last years. I have about a 3% UT with 28k TC. I maintain a 30% UT on the cards that I have balances on.

I recently opened a Cap1 QS 1 with a 3K limit and a BMW CC with a 2500k limit 0% apr for 15 months carrying 29% UT. I’m using my Cap1 like a debit card and make multiple payments a month. I also use a Amazon Prime Store card and PIF monthly.

I was recently declined by Citi for the Double Cash rewards and I didn’t prequalify with Discover due to my BK. They sent me a letter.

To increase my scores to where there are now, my sister added me as AU on her Discover 17k with a 6k balance, Citi 21k limit with a 0 balance, Chase with 19k limit wilt a 2k balance (hasn’t shown up on my CR’s yet) and a Barclaycard’s 15k limit with a 96 dollar balance. She added me within the last month to her accounts. My Total credit limit would be 101,350 with a 12% UT with her debt. My current income is 125k. I have 70k in student loans, 20k in a car loan and 6k in a personal loan.

My question is should I apply for secured cards now and build relationships with them for 2 years (if they approve me) or garden for two years to clean up the 13 new accounts and the hard inquiries? Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Soxfaninfl

Re: Secured Discover and Citi Bank CC’s

Anonymous — Sun, 06 Oct 2019 05:18:57 GMT

A Citi legacy credit card could will take a bit of time with a BK reporting, with one exception but I’ll save that for another time).

You may have more luck with the Citi retail side.

As for the Citi Secured......lf I recall correctly, the Citi secured card requires 12 or 24 months post file date per the website. (I can’t remember offhand with looking it up......things may have changed that I may not be aware of due to that not being my personal focus anymore. It will be in the TOC if still accurate.) If you apply and are approved, they unsecure after 18 with on time payments etc. Good secured card.

Now as for Discover.....also another good secured card but can unsecure much quicker.

My personal story....I applied for Discover secured in June/July 2016. And I was denied. 6 months later, I applied (with no pre-approval) for the unsecured IT and was approved for $1k. At this point, this wasn’t even close to my highest limit, but I was estatic! Imo, this was the turning point in my mind about my rebuild.

I said all that...to say this. Both are good secured cards. Do you need secured cards right now or do you need to just be patient? That’s up to you.

Re: Secured Discover and Citi Bank CC’s

soxfaininfl — Sun, 06 Oct 2019 05:40:34 GMT

Thank for the reply JAG73. I've had a Best Buy (Citi) CC 2k limit since February 2019. I've never gone over the 30% UT. I've never paid interest on their card either. I've taken advantage of their promotions of 0% interest on 2 occasions. I've also had the Home Depot (Citi) CC 500 limit since December of 2018. I've also used it monthly and never paid interest. I tried to get CLI, but they declined me because of too many inquiries in September. I just check my report, and I'm now at 10 inquiries with Exp. I'd like to get better cash back rewards cards like the Double cash rewards(2% cash back on all purchases) or the Discover IT. I fguired I'd put my time in for the next two years with them and use them monthly and PIF to build that realationship to get their unsecured cards. I'm just concerned that they will decline me, and I would take on more hard inquiries.

@Anonymous wrote:
A Citi legacy credit card could will take a bit of time with a BK reporting, with one exception but I’ll save that for another time).
You may have more luck with the Citi retail side.
As for the Citi Secured......lf I recall correctly, the Citi secured card requires 12 or 24 months post file date per the website. (I can’t remember offhand with looking it up......things may have changed that I may not be aware of due to that not being my personal focus anymore. It will be in the TOC if still accurate.) If you apply and are approved, they unsecure after 18 with on time payments etc. Good secured card.

Now as for Discover.....also another good secured card but can unsecure much quicker.
My personal story....I applied for Discover secured in June/July 2016. And I was denied. 6 months later, I applied (with no pre-approval) for the unsecured IT and was approved for $1k. At this point, this wasn’t even close to my highest limit, but I was estatic! Imo, this was the turning point in my mind about my rebuild.

I said all that...to say this. Both are good secured cards. Do you need secured cards right now or do you need to just be patient? That’s up to you.

Re: Secured Discover and Citi Bank CC’s

calyx — Sun, 06 Oct 2019 16:34:52 GMT

Citi Secured requires 2 years post discharge, so you'll have to wait a couple of months if you want to go in that way.

My Citi Secured graduated at 12 months (I got the letter at 10.5 months, but then it took another 6 weeks to get the card change, deposit, etc) and I have been rather happy with them, so I'd recommend them with Discover (I'll argue discover is better because you get rewards). Citi does say that your card is eligible for graduation at 18 months, but they do start reviewing it at about 9 months.

Many secured cards allow you to increase your deposit with them to increase your CL, however Citi does not, so I would recommend giving them the biggest deposit you can manage if you choose that route.

Re: Secured Discover and Citi Bank CC’s

soxfaininfl — Sun, 06 Oct 2019 17:02:36 GMT

Thank you for the feedback calyx! Would you mind telling me how big of a deposit you gave Citi? I just looked over their secured CC application and saw that I have to wait 2 years from my discharge. For good measure I’ll wait till I’m 2 years and a month out. I think I may wait on Discover too.

Re: Secured Discover and Citi Bank CC’s

calyx — Sun, 06 Oct 2019 23:27:02 GMT

No problem - $1000. I wish I'd given them more, but at the time, I felt like $1000 was a lot

Re: Secured Discover and Citi Bank CC’s

soxfaininfl — Sun, 06 Oct 2019 23:29:51 GMT

Okay, thank you! I want to follow suit the same steps you took to graduate.

Re: Secured Discover and Citi Bank CC’s

designated_knitter — Tue, 08 Oct 2019 01:13:36 GMT

US Bank seems to be very lenient -- they approved me for not 1 but TWO secured cards and they actually pay a few pennies of interest. This was when Wells Fargo wouldn't and BOA turned me down for secured cards (and I have accounts with WF). I don't know what US Bank's rules are post bankruptcy, though.

They're website is TERRIBLE and IT department seems to be staffed by a bunch of high school freshman in their first computer class since they will let you do incredibly stupid stuff that shouldn't be allowed. They don't update the available balances to update pending transactions.

You can schedule multiple payments for the same day to pay off your balance and wind up with a CREDIT balance of 2-3 times your available CL. For example, I have a 500.00 CL but had accidentally scheduled 3 payments for 500 bucks for the same day. They pulled ALL THREE TIMES so I wound up with a 1500 credit balance. Of course, they held all the payments for 8 business days so not only did I not have access to the cash, I didn't have access to the credit either.

But hey, when you are rebuilding, beggers can't be choosers!

Good luck!

Re: Secured Discover and Citi Bank CC’s

KJinNC — Tue, 08 Oct 2019 12:06:02 GMT

I don't know anything about BK. I also don't know anything about US Bank. But, I do have/had both of the secured cards you asked about, so I thought I'd add some comments about them.

First, in my opinion, I'd go ahead and get both of these as secured cards as soon as you can, rather than waiting until you can get the unsecured versions. The reason is that both graduate, so two years from now, you'd have cards with two years of history, as opposed to opening new cards at that time.

Discover is the 2%/1% card that doubles rewards after 12 months, meaning it's a 4%/2% card in the long run, and better still, you can PC it (even the secured version) after the first statement to the 5% rotating category version. That also gets a match after 12 months, so it's 10% in rotating categories!

Citi gives no rewards. It unsecures to the Diamond Preferred, which also gives no rewards. However, the Diamond Preferred can be PCed to the Double Cash, which is 2% on everything.

For me, I was able to qualify for the Citi secured card before I qualified for Discover secured, but that may be specific to my profile. In fact, Citi secured was the very first card I got this time around.

If I could have any one secured card, it would be Discover.

You should be aware, you can add to your Discover deposit/CL any time with a phone call; you can never add to your Citi deposit/CL, so I would suggest a deposit you can live with for a year or longer. I didn't know that, and opened my Citi secured card with only a $200 deposit. Since I could never increase it, I didn't really want to carry a $200 card for a year or more, so I closed it rather than waiting once I qualified for the PayPal MC, since that is also 2% like the Citi DC I would have eventually gotten.

Good luck!

Re: Secured Discover and Citi Bank CC’s

soxfaininfl — Tue, 08 Oct 2019 01:50:08 GMT

Thank you for the advice KJinNC! I appreciate it.

Re: Secured Discover and Citi Bank CC’s

joltdude — Tue, 08 Oct 2019 03:47:25 GMT

If i do my math right it will be about 2 years in Dec ... Discover does forgive.. Can you hang in a few more months ......

Id def try for a discover... might even check a preapproval and see if you can go unsecured ..... but that would not be until dec... You might have issues because your an AU however... Citi will be a harder nut to crack ........

-J

Re: Secured Discover and Citi Bank CC’s

calyx — Tue, 08 Oct 2019 14:32:17 GMT

A word about USBank secureds - if you go with on of their cobrandeds (like HarleyDavidson, Skypass), there is no annual fee, but you (reportedly) cannot PC away from those lines.

I went with USBank secured, but their vanilla secured visa, because I wanted to be able to PC it (I've since changed my mind, because the graduated visa - Visa Platinum - gives pretty decent cell phone insurance).

You do earn a pitiful amount of interest on the deposit, but you also pay an annual fee. I didn't mind, because $29 was worth a year of history with USBank to me, so you'll have to decide if you like USBank, what you ultimately want your goal to be there. Their website is a bit dated, but their app works fine, and their CS is pretty solid.

You can add deposits to them to increase your line, but they'll HP you when you send in the cheque/deposit and letter (I'm still bitter), and they will also HP you when you request to graduate (which I'm not quite so bitter about but still annoyed). They do not automatically graduate, so you do have to initiate the request. I did that when my second annual fee hit and they reversed the fee after my graduation went through (the graduated product is no AF). Their published requirement for graduation is a year of ontime payments (no delinquencies with them). Their unofficial requirement is a FICO of 680 at the time of graduation.