@silverk123 wrote:Its my understanding Toyota is a bit lenient but it helps to have the right finance manager going to bat for you.
Indeed. TFS has a loan product for just about everyone unlike Honda. Enjoy the car 
Go get another card now while the inquiries are fresh.
A second revolver will increase your score faster over time than waiting to apply for another one later. Orchard might approve you outright for an unsecured card, though it'll be a tiny CL so you might be better with a higher deposit secured.
The advice to wait between credit inquiries only applys (sometimes) to prime people, not folks like me (or the OP) where spreading out the inquiries just prolongs our period of being subprime. Get them all from the start and let time help you immediately on that second card and the inquiry aging rather than delaying by some arbitrary amount of time to hope for a slightly better card then.
@Revelate wrote:The advice to wait between credit inquiries only applys (sometimes) to prime people, not folks like me (or the OP) where spreading out the inquiries just prolongs our period of being subprime. Get them all from the start and let time help you immediately on that second card and the inquiry aging rather than delaying by some arbitrary amount of time to hope for a slightly better card then.
OP asked how to get a "real" or prime card. Sure, OP can get a second (or third or fifth) secured or toy card, maybe it will speed it up a bit (or they can see if they can up existing secured card too or be added as an AU on a clean prime acct, which doesn't even add inqs or fees or toys on your CR. And then there's the fact this isn't the start-OP also said the 10 inq are over the last yr, so some might soon stop scoring completely.) but to get a prime, OP will still have to wait and garden carefully at some point. And again, use those prequalifier sites first if you can.
Timing this isn't arbitrary, necessarily. Actually, it's pretty specific when it comes to how inqs score, fade and drop. How accounts age, how scores jump at certain intervals of aging...
You and the OP aren't the only ones who've been subprime, either. DH and I got 1 Cap 1 ea, loans, and then moved to store cards, a better Cap 1 and then prime. It took some waiting and patience, regardless. There's several routes to prime, after all. Some faster, some slower. But they all seem to involve patience. *sigh*
@Anonymous wrote:
@Revelate wrote:The advice to wait between credit inquiries only applys (sometimes) to prime people, not folks like me (or the OP) where spreading out the inquiries just prolongs our period of being subprime. Get them all from the start and let time help you immediately on that second card and the inquiry aging rather than delaying by some arbitrary amount of time to hope for a slightly better card then.
OP asked how to get a "real" or prime card. Sure, OP can get a second (or third or fifth) secured or toy card, maybe it will speed it up a bit (or they can see if they can up existing secured card too or be added as an AU on a clean prime acct, which doesn't even add inqs or fees or toys on your CR. And then there's the fact this isn't the start-OP also said the 10 inq are over the last yr, so some might soon stop scoring completely.) but to get a prime, OP will still have to wait and garden carefully at some point. And again, use those prequalifier sites first if you can.
Timing this isn't arbitrary, necessarily. Actually, it's pretty specific when it comes to how inqs score, fade and drop. How accounts age, how scores jump at certain intervals of aging...
You and the OP aren't the only ones who've been subprime, either.
580-640 doesn't go to prime in a year on one good history credit card and one good history auto loan I know that the aging of inquiries isn't arbirary, it's rooted in specific time cateogories: therefore, go eat the inquiry right now and let it age off with the rest of them.
Even at a thinfile before that, which most of us aren't, that'd be a challenge, but with any sort of derogs, there's a step or so before the mainline prime cards.
Just about everyone will agree that at two cards are a minimum for building or rebuilding, or even quality FICO scoring in general without a mortgage. People wind up looking a lot better at 6 months with a full 18 payments from three trade lines, than 12, nearly guarunteed. At a year, even better, and it also gives you more options for not mauling your AAoA quite as badly over the 3-6 month time period as a rebuilder when you trade one of the starter cards up to a prime card later.
There's absolutely no downsides unless you're trying to qualify for a mortgage in under six months. except your score will be a little lower for the next 1-2 months with the new trade line, when it doesn't even matter anyway as you're not going to be applying for anything new after that second card for a while... so take the hit right up front, rather than later, and you get to a prime card faster on the whole.