Okay, so I've been meaning to sign up for a while now and have been on this forum lurking about a year now. I made the decision to go ahead and sign up after hitting a few goals for this year.
Backstory
I know this isn't supposed to be an into post, but maybe giving a little bit of a backstory will help understand what this means to me. I've been in SL debt for the past several years and knew my credit had suffered a lot from it. Then I wasn't taught how to be responsible with credit and blew my chances of getting approved for anything before I even turned 20. In January of this year, I made the decision that I would turn my credit world around and worked hard towards getting as much stuff removed as possible. I worked with a firm that helps with this, and went from a starting score of 517 EX, 537 EQ, 524 TU, to 610's as of a couple of months ago. I then applied for a couple of Chase cards, including the Unlimited Freedom and the Explorer United card. Not sure if because I bank with them already or something else, but I was approved for both cards with a $5,000 CL. As I started my quest for better credit, I really educated myself on how credit runs, how small things like utilization can hurt credit, and many other things. I can safely say I've paid off every purchase I've made (so many that Chase called me to verify a few purchases) well before the due date and have maintained a 0%-3% utilization (depending on when the snapshot was made). I was denied by Discover it card after and that got me down a little because I really thought I was ready to take on more cards and that I was improving my score, as it was steadily going up. In the back of my mind, these were all steps toward the big cards, like AMEX Platinum, CSP, CSR, and a few others in that range.
Road to AMEX Platinum:
After being denied for that one card a couple of months ago, the same one I was previously denied for several years ago when my credit was much worse, I decided to look back at the AMEX card to take my mind off of it, since that was one of my real goals for this year. I mean to go from no one giving me a card to an AMEX P was almost like a pipedream when I first started repairing/ building up my credit. After reading about it more and more, I just decided to go ahead and pull the trigger, though I wasn't sure if my credit was ready. Currently, my Fico scores sit at EX 646, EQ 678, TU 670. I applied and was told they'd need 14-30 days to make a credit decision. I was biting my nails through the process as it already was and the last thing I wanted was a hard inquiry and nothing to show for it. After several days, I got an email from AMEX saying they updated my status. I quickly followed the link and saw that the status said "CANCELLED". I was like.. "What in the world, why?!" They then had a button for more details and apparently they called me but no one answered (which was odd because I didn't receive any calls, but okay). They gave a number to call to finish the application, which was much better than my initial thought of someone just cancelled my entire application, after hitting me with a hard inquiry. I called the number given, they asked me some security questions, and told me they'd need to call me back. They then called me back about 30 seconds later, had me answer the security questions a second time, and then.... congratulated me on getting their AMEX Platinum card. As I tried to keep my composure over the phone, I could only thank him for his time, while kicking my legs furiously on the bed in excitement.
Final Thoughts:
I know this is just a charge card, but for me, it's more of a symbol of just how far I've come, since January of this year. I feel much more educated about my important numbers, score effects, and how pretending my scores don't exist isn't the best way to go in life. I believe that January me would've been really dumb with this card, but current me will be very responsible and I can't wait to start responsibly using it.
-Shippo
Best of luck going forward
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