I agree. It depends. My spouse and I actually joined about a year ago when our scores were in the 500's/low 600's. But we did immediately start having our paychecks direct deposited and also established savings acocunts. We also re-financed one of our cars with them. So we did establish a relationship. My spouse was approved for the Platinum card with a $4200 CL when we joined. She added me as an authorized user. I waited until August to apply for my own card. Got approved for the Cash Rewards for $7300 (at the same time, my spouse was approved for CLI that brought her Platinum card up to $7200).
Income may be a factor as well. We have a combined income of around $115K. We are both in the medical field, so I don't know if maybe our professions are deemed a better risk. We also have been very mindful of our utilization at SCD for all cards that we use - whicn is 3 cards out of 10. We stopped using the small sub-prime cards. To that end, we make multiple payments on the cards throughout the month, so our statement balance is always paid off. We use the Cash Rewards card ALOT, so I'm sure NFCU is loving the transaction fees that come from the merchants.
I think all of these things (and I'm sure many other things) have factored into our most recent success.
