I have 175k federal and around 40k private when I joined NFCU. My federal is in IDR on the REPAYE plan because I qualify for PSLF so I pay 10% of my discretionary income. My private min payment is 700/month. My income is 92k. I have a recent BK, but no cc debt. My experience with Navy has been beyond great. I think you'll find varying experiences from different CUs, but Navy has a reputation for being lenient. I joined in January and already have two cards, one at 9900 and another at 12,500. It does take time though and I've made a decent rebuild before finding Navy.
@recoveringfrombk7 wrote:I have 175k federal and around 40k private when I joined NFCU. My federal is in IDR on the REPAYE plan because I qualify for PSLF so I pay 10% of my discretionary income. My private min payment is 700/month. My income is 92k. I have a recent BK, but no cc debt. My experience with Navy has been beyond great. I think you'll find varying experiences from different CUs, but Navy has a reputation for being lenient. I joined in January and already have two cards, one at 9900 and another at 12,500. It does take time though and I've made a decent rebuild before finding Navy.
Thank you. So it's really likely just my cc, auto loan debt and my collections.
I need to focus on getting all this paid off.
@collics wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
@collics wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:I became an NFCU member in 11/2019, applied for and was instantly approved for the secured card with a $500 deposit in my savings - and my score was in the 400's. Income is now only Social Security disability = ~$1000/month, have two Capital One cards (total CL $4500) and Discover (CL $1750), all three maxed out but payments on time, and lots of collections and charge offs that re-report every month from when I became disabled and had to let everything go except the Capital One's (my highest CL) and Discover (was my oldest account). So I somehow have a very different experience than you have evidently had with NFCU vis-a-vis score requirements, DTI, and approval for the secured card.
I'm sure it's my student loans hurting my DTI the most. It's over $100k (u don't even wanna know), yet I only make $40k/y.
They've been that amount now for over a decade and it's never stopped approval from other lenders even after my BK7.
Hopefully getting my current, non student loan debt down will help w Navy.
With the SLs, I would avoid most CUs for CCs, just in my personal experience.
I have something like 135k+ in SLs and make a but more than that annually, but the last CU somehow determined my income was like 26k! I have an unusal paycheck and they apparently couldn't figure it out even though bank statements and W2s reflect much more than that (and obviously the paychecks themselves). Anywho...they definitely relied on DTI and figured on their calculations how much the SLs monthly payments are and not even at what your payments actually are (via ibr or deferement or whatever), but rather used 2.5% of the balance as a monthly payment amount, which is basically insane, as even most mortgages calculate at 1%. They were unwilling to change the calculation unless my SL servicers could provide documentation of what the payments would be *for the life of the loans*...which obviously with IBR or anything else, they recertify you annually. And in the end, even going off of the *actual* payment amounts, they were just jerking me around and would not budge on the calculations.
Lesson learned, I now completely stay away from CUs for the rest of my foreseeable life (or until they are paid off or forigiven, which is decades from now) for getting CCs. The application process was comprable to getting a mortgage and in the end couldn't even get a $300 secured CC because they were afraid I just couldn't afford to pay it!
Enough of my gripe, but that is too bad that they couldn't help you get your foot in the door with at least a secured card to prove yourself.
Your situation is not the average outcome.
Plenty of credit unions have given credit to those who could not get credit with a bank.
They are not, in general, harder to deal with.
As always, YMMV.
I am rebuilding, scores vary but were in the lower 600's across the board, with a few baddies reported. In April I was approved for a 300.00 secured NFCU card, then applied a week later for unsecured cash rewards. I was denied due to DTI, which was under 18%.... I tried to recon, twice... they didn't change their decision. Then I recalculated my income, (realized I had given it a low estimate (98,000 on the 1st application) and did another app for the unsecured card again a few days later. I was then approved for 1500.00 cash rewards. Total annual income reported was 110,000.
Ive read here many times that NFCU is very picky about DTI.... and it proved correct in my case, as I added the higher income and was instantly approved. I've been a member for 13 years, never applied for a credit product with them until April. I was pretty surprised, but thankful for the approval.
At the time I was thinking maybe because the first one was secured? But yes, cards were opened about a week apart.
Also, another interesting fact.... I had an old 2nd checking account that was negative which apparently had me blacklisted with Navy for several years, which I didn't really know about until reading the forums here. It was a debt that was over 5 years old. meanwhile, I used my other checking and savings account all throughout that time with zero issues. I paid the old debt then immediately that day applied and approved for the for the secured card, then the cash rewards a week later as mentioned above..... guess I just got lucky?
@Anonymous wrote:
@recoveringfrombk7 wrote:I have 175k federal and around 40k private when I joined NFCU. My federal is in IDR on the REPAYE plan because I qualify for PSLF so I pay 10% of my discretionary income. My private min payment is 700/month. My income is 92k. I have a recent BK, but no cc debt. My experience with Navy has been beyond great. I think you'll find varying experiences from different CUs, but Navy has a reputation for being lenient. I joined in January and already have two cards, one at 9900 and another at 12,500. It does take time though and I've made a decent rebuild before finding Navy.
maybe 92k was just enough to offset the SLs.
Possible. I also have no housing or car payment.
