@Jazee wrote:
@ficobuilder923 wrote:
-TU Fico 9: 803, TU Fico 8: 780, all scores 750+. Note that I've done all of this in the past year, my score as of a year ago was 630's for all 3 bureaus. Then I started learning how the game is played, took out a consolidation loan in Feb 2020 for 15k to KO revolving debt and the rest is history.
I would wait at least 6 months after the first card to apply for Flagship, and don't feel bad about the low starting limit on your first card - it's very common. My first card was the MR (product changed from previously nRewards secured) in 2011 and they gave me the same and it was only raised once(?) to 3k from 2011-2020, I didn't know how the credit game worked. The second card, if you have a good proven relationship with them, is where they unlock the door for you (25k flagship for me). On a different tangent, their 0% down mortgage was the only way we could get into our first house and we paid the higher rate for a few years before refinancing. NFCU is the best, hands down - very grateful to them.
It's experiences like this that keep me coming back to follow this thread. I'm in a similar position having brought my scores from the 630's to the 730's with all 3 bureaus in a little over a year. My file looks good except for no mortgage and a 5-yo charge-off I haven't resolved (yet.) I quickly learned from here, instead of just sitting on my 15-yo USAA Visa Signature and never asking for a CLI, or applying for a new card, that I was leaving money (err, I suppose 'credit' is the best term) "on the table" and hampering/delaying my score improvement.
I was denied Amazon card when in the 630s but the Store Card was my first approval since a home equity loan 12 years ago. Chase is who I still have a C/O on file with so it's going to be no dice with them. So read about the fantastic service and product terms/approvals from NFCU. Joined them almost 2 months ago and was easily approved for Platinum $3K SL with proof of income. But that brought me to only 3 cards total with a $14.5K total CL (and an auto loan.) I recently tried a Hail Mary for the BofA Premium Rewards card after waiting for my UTI to go from about 8% to 3% (didn't improve my Experian score unfortunately) and even opened BofA and Merril Lynch accounts just in case it helped but that card is notoriously hard to get unless you have some sizeable accounts with BofA and Merril.
I just want one more card that is travel related (at 2% travel spend reward), luggage reimbursement, travel insurance, TSA reimbursement, no foreign transaction fee, etc. Navy sig has it except for no Travel Insurance.
The two common things I see in your stellar Navy approvals and the (few) approvals reported on the BofA Premium Rewards is there is strong evidence these banks are putting a lot of weight on the overall length and size of your banking relationship with them in addition to all the other usual considerations. This would explain why someone like me with a > $100K income, and low DTI (as I have no mortgage) and 3% total UTI on my 3 cards, has a much harder time to get approvals and gets much lower SLs. It's Navy (and BofA) saying, hey, we see you have a thick file with only one blemish, low UTI, and a decent score, but we need to get to know you directly better first before we offer you more credit.
I also always thought if your file showed you had a huge amount of available revolving credit, that could be a yellow flag, as the new account issuer has no idea if all the sudden you are going to go on a spending spree and not pay off/down your balances. But I am seeing a pattern to the contrary. If you have a decent average age of accounts then I think the bank looks at it as "you've had all this credit limit for that long and you score is pretty good so you can probably handle 15% more credit." If you're total available credit is $150K. 15% more is $22.5K. If your total credit available like me is $14.5K then 15% more is an SL of $2,175.
At this point my main decision is after 3 statements on the Platinum, do I app for the More Rewards, or do I wait until after 6 statement like your recommend? It seems to me from all the messages I've read, if you app for the More Rewards after 3 statements BEFORE asking for a CLI on the Platinum, it's probably not going to make a difference if you wait 6 months instead of 3 to try for the 2nd card. Just a guess. I'm just trying to build more history ASAP and get the CLI waiting periods started sooner than later and not get too close to when I apply for a mortgage with opening new accounts so that's why I'm leaning towards 3 months. Seems virtually no one pulls TU except for a handful of banks. I just have one NFCU and one Synchrony in the past two years so if I was denied at 3 months and approved at 6 the only downside would be 1 extra HP.
Also don't forget that we had 2 personal loans with NFCU (and at a really crappy rate I may add) but we were kind of desperate since my wife wasn't working at the time. Also forgot to add I did do one of those secured "credit builder" loans for like 300 bucks with them in 2010 or 2011 when I opened up the nRewards secured cc. So that's basically 3 loans over 10 years without a missed payment plus 5 years of mortgage. We also have 4 cc's with zero missed payments as well plus we still run a rental rent payment through our personal account. That's a lot of historical data and we are thinking of throwing them some more business with another mortgage (second home) this year since they've been so good to us and then refi it after 6-12 months.
So what you may want to do is have your direct deposit hit their checking for starters to assure them you have money coming in. Then maybe throw a couple hundred into a secured builder loan with them where they can earn $5 interest? Just spitballing here but basically any type of installment loan is going to help your relationship/internal score with them even if you had to eat the interest on a $1k unsecured loan at say 15%. That will probably really accelerate your path to the $85,000 aggregate total credit card limit. My plan is 50k Platinum, 25k Flagship and 10k More Rewards. Just spoke with them on Tuesday and am getting them to move 20k from Flagship over to the new Platinum (so Platinum will be at 45k, Flagship 9k, MR 7k) and get this, he claims that any amount (eg 20k I'm moving) from other cards to the Platinum is now eligible for the 0% over 12 months balance transfer SUB! The only caveat is they can only do up to $30k from 1 entity on a balance transfer but still, that's sick. So I'll be moving 30k from 2 diff helocs at the same bank to this card to zap the interest which will clear a good 400/month in cashflow for the next 12 mos.
