Student credit application question?

[Anonymous]

Evening, everyone!  Looking forward to being a member of the community around here. 

I'm currently a junior enginnering student here at Penn State in Erie, PA, with an admittedly respectable GPA - I love it up here, but being a student also means two things:  I have a lot of expenses and a disproportionately small income, both of which bode poorly on an application for anything meaningful.

I've recently been looking into applying for a Capital One Journey card (recommendations welcome, though), mainly to start building a credit history more than anything else.  The 'problem' I'm running into right now is that while I'm currently employed by the University and work under two professors at the moment, my official income per year is only the $2,000 from part time university work, along with ~$3,000 or so over the summer working part-time until the fall semester.  I'd rather not go into details, but I'm lucky enough to have a family member generously help with tuition and housing, which leaves me in an amazing position at the moment which I couldn't be more thankful for.

Unfortunately, my current rent totals roughly $800 per month; at almost $10K annually, this is obviously a lot more than what I can list as my personal income.  I suspect a credit provider wouldn't exactly be impressed with my ability to repay a debt given these figures.

I suppose my question to those with more experience is this.  What is the best way for a student to go about independantly opening a line of credit when financially supported by a family member?  If my understanding of income verifications stands, I don't have any way of officially recognizing the support I'm being provided (tax forms, etc) as a form of personal income, and a query sent out for my personal tax information would only come back with information from my own current employers.  Any thoughts?  I'm sure there are others in this position, and so rather than stumble blindly around looking for financial advice I figured I'd stop through and ask the people with first-hand experience!

Sorry for the massive post!  Much appreciated,

- Matt C.

[Anonymous]

Not entirely sure if you can do this but since you are not paying your rent from your personal income, could you just put $0 for monthly rent?

I lived in a dorm and took out student loans so not very familiar with your situation. Hopefully another member can pitch in.

[Skye12329]

Are you over the age of 21? I ask this because on most CC applications it states you may include someone elses income if it is used regularly to pay your bills/available to pay the CC bill. I say this because you could put down the amount of money they pay your bills for (rent) as your income, HOWEVER for amount of rent you pay a month i would put the amount down that they are paying. So if they pay 800 a month, put that down.

IF your are not over 21. I would suggest only putting down your income and 0 for rent since your not technically paying any rent (if i read post correctly). The big issue here is i don't know if a lender would approve for less than 10k income. Or at least 5k income. 

[Anonymous]

Right - housings costs aren't currently drawing directly from my own personal account.  I am over 21, so listing my income from the household sounds like my best bet... I can only image having $0 listed for rent/mortgage would throw quite a few red flags during the screening process, if the entire application weren't already written off for being at such a low income at the moment.

Even if they throw a bare minimum credit line my way, it wouldn't be too much of a problem - I'm looking more to build some sort of tangible credit score for the future when I have to start shipping myself around the country to get working; it's hard to tell where I'll end up when whichever company I end up with decides they need an electrical engineer out in Silicon Valley more than in western Pennsylvania.

[OmarGB9]

I've listed $0 as my monthly rent on all of my credit apps and it's never been an issue. (Live at home with parents while I finish college.)

[Anonymous]

I currently list my allowance from parents and the earnings from my part time job as my income. My parents generously cover my tuition and rent, so I put down $0 as my rental fees. If they have questions, they'll call you. That only happened once with the Target card, and I was still accepted.