Score 8 TU649, EQ689, EX689
Ok background, I have a BK from April 2013, 15 student loans that had a late pay (120 days) as of March 2016. Everything since then has been perfect payments. I'm in a unique situation where I work remotely from home as a software engineer for two full-time companies. Combined income is 227K /yr. Three years ago I was making 30K supporting a family of 5 so there was never enough money and I was in all kinds of financial troubles. Then I taught myself to code and everything started changing.
I already had a Capital One Quicksilver card at 10K. This started out as two separate cap one cards with low limits ($750 and $1250) that I keep paying on and working up to $7500 and $2500. At that point, I stopped getting increases and decided to combine the two cards into one with a 10K limit. I also had a Merrick Bank card that I got right after the BK with a $1600 limit. That one has never been raised as I don't use it so they won't raise it. I also had a $500 secured USAA/Amex card through USAA. That card maxes at 5K and NEVER graduates to an unsecured card. Also got the Discover IT secured card about a month ago for the minimum to open amount of $200.
I'm in the situation now of having a high income but bad credit. I was listening to Hustlers Kungfu channel on youtube and he talked about a strategy of getting high limit secured cards if you have the money to help change your credit situation so I set out to do just that. He said that 5K is the magic number that moves you out of the "sub-prime" category and into "prime" credit territory. I had about 18K sitting in various bank accounts. I made some money moves and set to work getting some secured cards. I went to Wells Fargo and got their secured Visa for 5K. This card has a max of up to 15K. I did the same at US Bank with their secured card for 5K which is its max. I tried a couple of smaller local banks but they didn't have secured cards that would go up to 5K. Some were 1K, some were 2500 but not up to 5K.
I then set out to go to some credit unions and I found something surprising. I keep going to credit unions trying to get secured and they kept giving me unsecured! Started with DCU www.dcu.org. I called to get 5K secured and she offered me 3K unsecured. I took it even though it's not at the 5K magic number because I just figured it would add to my overall credit limit. I then visited Mountain American Credit Union www.macu.com trying to get 5K secured and was offered 5K unsecured. I took that. Visited Ameria First Credit Union for 5K secured and was offered 6K unsecured. Then called into Pentagon Credit Union www.penfed.org and applied and got approved for 10K unsecured.
I also maxed out the limit on the Discover IT card up to $2500 (added $2300) and increased the USAA secured card up to $1150 (added $600).
If you didn't know almost anyone can join any credit union out there. There's always a "backdoor" way to becoming a member. I had freashly signed up for DCU, America First CU and PenFed CU. I also signed up for NASA CU but didn't apply for a card...yet lol. I'm also a member of Navy Federal CU which has probably the best secured card out there that does graduate but I didn't apply there either.
So I ended up with 10K (plus $2900 in cli on discover and usaa secured) in secured cards and another 21K in unsecured cards all in two weeks.
$10k -
$5k - Secured
$5k - Secured
$6k -
$10K -
$2.5k - (Previously Secured)
$6k - Secured Business
$5k -
$1.6k -
$2k - Secured
Congratulations on your many successes! I knowthat with NFCU, which ever card you decide you want will grow. All of their cc have a max of $50k with the exception on the Flagship which is $80k. I am glad that your re0build is going spectacular. I would go into the garden for some seasoning and work on raising the CL. US Bank uses SP for CLI. Good luck
My scores actually went up! TU dropped 6 points then rose 9 points the next day. It was probably the inquiries taking it down and then the new credit limits that brought it back up.
Nice way to use your savings! Best of luck! 😎😎👏🏽
