topic Re: What's the best secured rewards card? in Rebuilding Your Credit

What's the best secured rewards card?

user365735 — Sat, 10 Dec 2022 12:59:20 GMT

I'm looking for a secured card that has good Cashback, specifically on dining and fuel. So far I've found discover and boa. Any other options? Will they let me in as secured if I burned them in chapter 7?

Re: What's the best secured rewards card?

IamWesty12 — Sat, 10 Dec 2022 13:28:30 GMT

@user365735 wrote:
I'm looking for a secured card that has good Cashback, specifically on dining and fuel. So far I've found discover and boa. Any other options? Will they let me in as secured if I burned them in chapter 7?

@user365735 Yup, DIsco is by far the best rewards card.....secured or unsecured. They are the only company that I am aware that matches your spending 100% after the first 12 months of use. That coupled with their great customer service make them an obvious choice for me. I look forward to hearing others choices as well. I think they offer the most bang for your buck when it comes to a secured credit card, just MHO. As far as the BK7, I am unsure of this but I am sure our well esteemed members can offer some 411 on this question. Best wishes, keep us posted on what you choose!

credit dRe: What's the best secured rewards card?

citymunky — Sat, 10 Dec 2022 13:30:55 GMT

Sable One. There is no hard pull. 2% cash back on Amazon, Whole Foods, and other selected retailers. 1% on everything else. There is an easy graduation path clearly layed out on the app. Meet all the milestones for 4 months in row and the odds for unsecured verison is very likely. https://sablecard.com/credit

Re: What's the best secured rewards card?

FireMedic1 — Sat, 10 Dec 2022 13:58:57 GMT

If you burned them both. Discover yrs out. BoA. Well never basically. Getting higher reward cards out of BK will take time. Getting to 3 revolvers and a installment loan is whats needed. Then time to get up to 700. Once there those better reward cards will get easier to come by. Just takes time.

Re: What's the best secured rewards card?

user365735 — Sat, 10 Dec 2022 21:43:31 GMT

"We appreciate your interest in Sable. Account applications to Sable are no longer being accepted."

Firemedic, do you mean discover/boa won't even let me back in with a secured card?

Re: What's the best secured rewards card?

FireMedic1 — Sat, 10 Dec 2022 23:05:36 GMT

Sorry. Won't happen for a long time. You can try Open Sky with no HP. Just need 3 revolvers. We don't have many choices fresh out of BK.

Re: What's the best secured rewards card?

user365735 — Sat, 10 Dec 2022 23:28:46 GMT

I have mission one and credit one already. Good cards no fees just low limits.

I have premier and milestone approved but I wanna cancel them and get a secured card. Looking for something that gives Cashback though. If opensky is my only choice then so be it.

Re: What's the best secured rewards card?

Horseshoez — Sat, 10 Dec 2022 23:47:09 GMT

@user365735 wrote:
"We appreciate your interest in Sable. Account applications to Sable are no longer being accepted."

Firemedic, do you mean discover/boa won't even let me back in with a secured card?

I didn't burn either BofA or Discover and yet both denied me a secured card after my Chapter 13. In the end I got a secured card from TDBank (which offers 1% rewards while secured) in July of 2020; that card graduated to unsecured with a 3/2/1 graduated cash reward after six months, and then got an auto-CLI to $8,500 a year later.

Re: What's the best secured rewards card?

user365735 — Sun, 11 Dec 2022 05:50:52 GMT

No one will take me. Only open sky and premier. I'm wondering if I should just keep premier to build credit.

Re: What's the best secured rewards card?

FireMedic1 — Sun, 11 Dec 2022 13:47:08 GMT

@user365735 wrote:
I have mission one and credit one already. Good cards no fees just low limits.

I have premier and milestone approved but I wanna cancel them and get a secured card. Looking for something that gives Cashback though. If opensky is my only choice then so be it.

Once again. Wait it out. Do not close them. FICO doesnt care who the name is or the credit limit. The consumer does. Your have to build slowly. May not be what you want right now. But those cards are doing more for you than you know. Keep what you got. Let them grow for a year. Then start looking around. It isnt going to happen right now. Once at 700. Then peek around. You keep HP'ing and accepting. You stay in the 600's never to see 700's. Sit back relax and use what you got for now. Want a witness? @IamWesty12 can verify.

Re: What's the best secured rewards card?

IamWesty12 — Sun, 11 Dec 2022 15:44:44 GMT

@FireMedic1 wrote:
@user365735 wrote:
I have mission one and credit one already. Good cards no fees just low limits.

I have premier and milestone approved but I wanna cancel them and get a secured card. Looking for something that gives Cashback though. If opensky is my only choice then so be it.

Once again. Wait it out. Do not close them. FICO doesnt care who the name is or the credit limit. The consumer does. Your have to build slowly. May not be what you want right now. But those cards are doing more for you than you know. Keep what you got. Let them grow for a year. Then start looking around. It isnt going to happen right now. Once at 700. Then peek around. You keep HP'ing and accepting. You stay in the 600's never to see 700's. Sit back relax and use what you got for now. Want a witness? @IamWesty12 can verify.

@FireMedic1 @user365735 honestly, you need to just let time and patience be your guide rn. Like stated previously, I opened my secured Discover CC with $200 in May 2021 and that was all I could muster up to send at that moment. At first I wasn't going to bother, because I was focusing on the credit limit I would have self imposed on myself. But for whatever reason I am grateful I listened to my more rational self and sent in the $200. It isn't about the name on the credit card (except my name, lol) nor is it about the credit limit on the card. It is about starting and nurturing a healthly relationship with a great credit card. By December 2021 that $200 had graduated to an unsecured $1K credit card and on top of that I had my original $200 refunded in like 3 days. Today they have continued to increase my CL and after the first 12 months I also received their famous cash match for 1 year perk! I am not the most credit or saavy consumer, but I credit this relationship w/ Discover to how I just got approved for a NFCU platinum $20K credit card last month. Of course I was a member first and have both checking and savings with them including a portion of my biweekly pay as direct deposit. But honestly, my original Discover secured card coupled with time and patience, is what I believe are why I sit over 700 on my scores. It sucks, I get it, but you are in a bind rn. You filed BK and this is what is needed now. I am typically not this blatant but truly you need to just sit back, chill and relax. The only next step that is going to realistically help you rn is TIME. If you keep opening up new cards you are going to continue to reset your ages and all the other algorythmns and how they work. I also had a SELF help loan and while it wasn't the most popular to do, I didn't realize that until after I joined myfico. But it did help establish a installment loan at that time for me. But I didn't have a bankruptcy on my credit reports, lest alone recently. I hated when folks like @FireMedic1 told me that time was my friend back then but he was and is 100% correct. Two years ago if someone had told me I would have a NFCU account or a starting $20K credit card w/ them I would have laughed all around. There ya go, my more then 0.2 cents worth

Re: What's the best secured rewards card?

citymunky — Sun, 11 Dec 2022 16:50:24 GMT

@user365735 in regards to Sable not accepting any more applications, that is a bummer. It's not the best card out there, but it's not worse for rebuilding either. Being a small Fintech company, I wonder it they hit their marker cap.

Re: What's the best secured rewards card?

Jeffster1 — Mon, 12 Dec 2022 01:01:54 GMT

My first recommendation for a good secured rewards card would always be BofA, but since that is out of the picture, I would go with my 2nd choice recommendation, TD. I started out with both BofA CCR secured and TD Cash secured in March of 2021, and both graduated before the end of that year.

Re: What's the best secured rewards card?

user365735 — Mon, 12 Dec 2022 01:34:45 GMT

I tried for td got denied. I would like to build a relationship with bank to graduate but I burned them all. Citi, cap1....I applied for a secured card with American heritage. They are local.

I do have opensky approved. But will they upgrade me to a unsecured card? I'm definitely cancelling premier. Can't believe I applied for them.

Re: What's the best secured rewards card?

IamWesty12 — Mon, 12 Dec 2022 02:44:40 GMT

@user365735 wrote:
I tried for td got denied. I would like to build a relationship with bank to graduate but I burned them all. Citi, cap1....I applied for a secured card with American heritage. They are local.
I do have opensky approved. But will they upgrade me to a unsecured card? I'm definitely cancelling premier. Can't believe I applied for them.

@user365735 sorry to be the bearer of bad news but I don't believe that open sky will ever become an unsecured card, nor will they ever give CLI's. I know this as I too opened an open sky cc bc at the time it was what I needed to get a cc reporting and it was not a hard pull. I still have the card, to which I have my daughters monthly netflix charge then I auto pay it off soon after. Nothing more, nothing less. I do this to keep the monthly positive reporting to go on but now that I have recently gotten some prime big guys, before my AF pops up I am going to close it out. It was what my credit needed at that time but we all have to start somewhere and at the time I was grateful to start reporting a positive TL. Hope this helps! Just remember you are going in the right direction. You don't have to be desperate and just take any card just for the sake of it.

Re: What's the best secured rewards card?

crrredit — Mon, 12 Dec 2022 05:36:15 GMT

US Bank has three secured options. The Cash+ card lets you pick two 5% categories and one 2% category each quarter. But if the other secured cards that do hard pulls are rejecting you at this point, US Bank probably will, too.

Another option is First Progress. They have three secured cards and they don't do hard pulls. They have annual fees that range from $29 to $49 depending on which card you pick. The lower the annual fee, the higher the APR you pay. All card APR rates are high these days, but First Progress rates aren't crazy high like some other subprime options. They are a subprime card, but they aren't predatory like First Premier. You used to have to pay them using your bank's bill pay system, and the bank had to send them checks because electronic payments weren't an option, so you had to make sure you paid early to give snail mail some lead time. But I think now you can set up ACH payments from First Progress' site, and if you use your bank's bill pay system electronic payments are now an option. They're not rewards cards, and they'll never graduate, but there's no monthly fee or set up fee or any of that crap. Just a reasonable annual fee. I closed mine after Discover approved me for their secured card and I got my security deposit back from First Progress in two - three weeks. In the fine print of the card agreement there's a section that says if you want your deposit expedited you have to write to them using snail mail to request it. Otherwise it will take months to get your deposit back.

Re: What's the best secured rewards card?

FLLGuy — Mon, 12 Dec 2022 20:47:06 GMT

@user365735 - you got great advice here from @FireMedic1 . You're not alone, me included when we get discharged CH7 or CH13 the credit chains have been removed and we're anxious to get back credit cards. Unfortunately and for good reasons, secured and subprime credit cards with low toy limits and high interest rates are the only options and exist because we're consumers of their products during a specific time which we know it as the "Rebuild" phase of our credit journey. Keep in mind, you are not forever expected to stay with these cards and the ideal goal to reach here is getting better cards and retiring your subprime cards with time.

In summary the recipe to success as mentioned by others:

Get your 3x reloving credit cards to give fico your performance and data to compile attaching algorithms to give you scoring.
1. As mentioned prior by FireMedic - doesn't matter what card you have all they care about is scoring you.
2. Keep utilization low less 8% on one card let it report and zero out the other two.
If you have an installment account(s) this will also be helpful to improve scoring coupled with the revolving credit (Self/mortgage/auto/student loan)
Finally the most important ingredient and probably the one most are challenged by is waiting - good ole fashion "time" aging your cards.
1. How long? anywhere from 6mos to 1yr you can see great score improvements all dependent on your performance and handling.
2. many on here can testify former CH7/CH13 discharged this simple formula works.
3. At the same time, the same audience will tell you do not go credit application trigger happy it cost you longer and a good portion of lenders would rather see seasoned Bankruptcy 6mos to 12mos without high inquiries. Once you start going applying heavy you'll either get low limits and/or more denials keep your scores surpressed.
Once more - Time is all it takes.

Apologies I rambled a bit - i speak of my own experience following the sound advice from this community. It just works, as long as you follow the proven success paths.

Re: What's the best secured rewards card?

KangiCosmos — Tue, 13 Dec 2022 20:23:51 GMT

Did you check Discovers pre-qualify? You can check to see if you qualify with Disc with out a hard pull. If you only qualify with the secured it will show that card. $200 down. Unsecures later. Will minimumly unsecured to your secured amount possibly more. So the more you deposit to it the higher the amount your CL will be once unsecured. Max amount you can secure with is $2500.

@user365735 wrote:
I'm looking for a secured card that has good Cashback, specifically on dining and fuel. So far I've found discover and boa. Any other options? Will they let me in as secured if I burned them in chapter 7?

Re: What's the best secured rewards card?

Horseshoez — Tue, 13 Dec 2022 21:31:40 GMT

@KangiCosmos, Discover is a fickle beast; many are able to land a Discover card, secured or otherwise, within the first six months following a bankruptcy discharge, others, myself included, get zero love. I'm not sure what criteria they use for underwriting, but I was in a good position following my Chapter 13, good job, zero debt, low monthly overhead, and yet, in spite of a "pre-approved" application for a Discover-IT card they sent me in the mail, they denied me across the board, including a secured card.

It seems for many, Discover is the perfect choice for a credit card, for others, the only thing one will get when they apply is a hard pull.

Re: What's the best secured rewards card?

sjt — Tue, 20 Dec 2022 18:40:47 GMT

Check out US Bank, their Cash Plus and Connect have secured card versions. Last I heard, they approve if your BK was discharged but wont consider you for unsecured status until your BK is 5 years post filing date.