Been a hell of a journey getting back in with Amex and in with Chase at all. Yesterday I was approved for CSP with $8,500 SL and the Amex Gold. We have a wedding coming up so I will easily meet the sign up bonus on both. I really wasn't expecting to get approved for either of them so I'm incredibly grateful. I fell out of good graces with Amex a few years back and got back in with their Optima card a year ago.
Fiance deserves a lot of credit here as she added me as an AU on her Citi AA, Chase Southwest and her CSP a few months back. That certainly helped me get approved for the PenFed cash rewards card with a starting line of $10,000.
Only other cards I had in my name prior to being added as AU on the cards above and being approved for Penfed were:
DiscoverIT: $1,000 CL
DCU: $1,000 CL
Amex Optima: $500 CL
CapOne Quicksilver: $1,000
When I applied for the CSP and Amex Gold I had a total revolving line of credit of roughly $50,000, and we only leave a few hundred on the statements each month to report, so very little util.
Not exactly sure which reports they pulled my Fico Score 8 is 672 today. Credit Karma has my TU at 674 and my Equifax at 717.
Income about 150k. At minimum 12 late payments in my credit file from the past 10 years, including two items in collections (small $$ amounts).
Again based on the information above I really didn't expect to be approved, but I'm grateful it worked out. Hopefully the above info can help some folks. Happy to answer any questions.
Also might add that I did have to call recon for Chase. When I applied it said something to the effect of "we need more time to review your application." So I immediatelly called in, it took the gentlemen about 5 minutes, didn't really ask any questions and came back on the line to tell me I was approved. First recon experinece. Cheers.
