What about Justice FCU?

[Anonymous]

They are currently having their 'Summer Lending Event' which reads, 'We Have Money to Lend NOW!'.  Does anyone have any experience with them?

[austinguy907]

Yup!  Been with them for years now and haven't had any issues.  Early on I got the CC and Car Refi from them and it went off w/o a hitch.  What do you want to know?

They're easy to work with like most CU's and have that personal touch when working on loans.

When I asked them for a CLI they used EQ and it was an older model than others I asked at the same time.

CL's are assigned by DTI calculations.

They have interbank online transfers which is nice if you need to shuffle money around w/o having to deal with actually going to a branch and if you do go to a branch you can go to 99% of other CU locations and use shared branching services.

You can join through the sherriff's assoc for $15 buck donation.  http://nsa.sheriffs.org/s/join.aspx

[Anonymous]

---

@austinguy907 wrote:

Yup!  Been with them for years now and haven't had any issues.  Early on I got the CC and Car Refi from them and it went off w/o a hitch.  What do you want to know?

They're easy to work with like most CU's and have that personal touch when working on loans.

When I asked them for a CLI they used EQ and it was an older model than others I asked at the same time.

CL's are assigned by DTI calculations.

They have interbank online transfers which is nice if you need to shuffle money around w/o having to deal with actually going to a branch and if you do go to a branch you can go to 99% of other CU locations and use shared branching services.

You can join through the sherriff's assoc for $15 buck donation.  http://nsa.sheriffs.org/s/join.aspx

---

If you're in Northern Virginia, for example, Justice FCU shares branches with Northwest FCU. I seriously considered joining them this spring as I'm a federal DOJ employee. I ended up going with Apple instead (among other reasons, they have a large number of branches of their own scattered around the region, including one just a few blocks from me, and the closest Justice/Northwest branch is all the way across town), but I may join Justice at a later date, we'll see.

[austinguy907]

You don't need a physical branch for anything with JFCU as they'll do electronic everything to open new accounts and products.  They have shared branching with multiple locations in numerous CU's.  These days it's rare to find non-shared branch CU's but, there are a few of them that don't offer the option because they don't want to pay for the option for their members.  I've stumbled across a handful of them when I was shopping around for options a couple of years ago but, it's one thing to take into account when opening a new account with any CU.  I've got several accounts that aren't located in TX that I have full access to through share branching.

https://www.jfcu.org/SharedBranches

https://co-opcreditunions.org/locator/

http://sharedbranching.org/

[Anonymous]

You and my neighbor apparently have the same opinion of them.  They gave him a line of 28K on a CC a few years back and he's been singing their praises ever since.  My problem is I don't know if my scores are high enough to be approved.

[austinguy907]

Current Score: EQ 658 | TU 657 | EX 702 -- As of 07/2017

I would say you wouldn't have a problem.  There's another option though that could help...... CALL THEM!  

[austinguy907]

Their cards top out at 40K so, unless you're making 160K/yr you have nothing to worry about.  I started out with them at 10K and after the first year they gave me a 10% bump to 11K.  I hesitated on the CLI because of the HP but, when I had my stuff together enough and was in the mood to hit all 4 CU's for CLI's I went ahead and took the plunge and out of all 4 they cam back the highest with 29K and the others went to 16500-17000 each.

They didn't even blink an eye on the auro refi either.

[Anonymous]

So, you can call them in advance!  Glad you said that.  I've only been rebuilding for a month, so forgive my ignorance.  I had been wondering if you could call beforehand to ask what they were looking for before the actual application.

[Anonymous]

Awesome work on the CLI's.  That's a dream for me right now.

[austinguy907]

Most CU's are more open about their criteria vs big banks.

CU's work for you and look out for your best interest when it comes to financial tools.  Unfortunately I didn't start keeping more specific info on my apps for statistics until later on in my build. I can say from experience though your primed for a few different CU accounts if you're willing to put in the work with getting in the door for membership and then focusing your efforts on activity and grooming them into larger limits over time and CLI's.  I haven't really focused on my CU accounts though since 2014 when I started bringing other cards into the mix.  I keep them active with an annual charge for something though and keep the age clock going.  They don't tend to get as jumpy as other lenders either with CLD/AA events.  They make for a solid building foundation for other cards down the road as well.