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Congrats to all your success
Congrats on the great work and continued success!
Congratulations @eleven_eighteen!
Given your recent approvals (& denial), it's time to hit the garden for one year. Work on building your scores and nurturing your current cards. Also, make sure to work out a budget to pay off your balances. Continuously applying for BTs to shuffle around your debt is a red flag. Use the cards as a debit card and only spend money you have. 0% offers are great until you start spending money with no working plan to pay it off. This is especially difficult on a low income (been there done that). Your initial journey reminds me a lot of mine (back in the late 90s / early 2000s), so I can relate. Don't waste this second chance!!
@dogmeat wrote:Thanks for the story, and you've made great progress - congrats!
I think the ideal (for me) is that I only ever apply for credit when I decide to do so - independent of any "approval odds" or "curiosity getting the better of me" or "the offer might go away" type of temptations - with exceptions of perhaps some extraordinary deals or pre-qualify offers. It's an ideal, perhaps not always achieveable, but a goal.
A denial can make the best of us a bit sad, sure, but it can also be interpreted as an indicator that it's time to stop. If you let your new accounts age a year, the world will be your credit oyster.
That is definitely a big part of the reason for joining this forum. I realized I was going at it with no plan, just applying for whatever. It has worked so far but I fully understand that it probably looks bad to potential lenders. In a year and a half I've gone from only a car loan to a credit line that's nearly half my income, so while the denial stings overall I am very happy.
@KLEXH25 wrote:Congratulations @eleven_eighteen!
Given your recent approvals (& denial), it's time to hit the garden for one year. Work on building your scores and nurturing your current cards. Also, make sure to work out a budget to pay off your balances. Continuously applying for BTs to shuffle around your debt is a red flag. Use the cards as a debit card and only spend money you have. 0% offers are great until you start spending money with no working plan to pay it off. This is especially difficult on a low income (been there done that). Your initial journey reminds me a lot of mine (back in the late 90s / early 2000s), so I can relate. Don't waste this second chance!!
I do use my cards like debit, just haven't been able to get out of that hole that I fell in a year ago. I'm only down a few hundred on the BT card from what I initially owed, but that's partly because I'm now putting normal spending through it, too. I've only paid $3 in interest on the Discover due to problems getting paid by unemployment when my state was locked down - my employer hadn't reported my wages for most of last year and took over a month to get it sorted. I had the money but being charged $3 was the better option than maybe not having that money to buy food, or using it to pay the card but then possibly having to put more on the card and being right back in the same situation.
Once unemployment got sorted, I paid down the Discover to zero, so only had one statement with a balance on a card that doesn't have 0% interest. Other than that, I pay in full every month for the non-BT cards, and the BT card I pay the minimum a day or two after the statement closes so that is taken care of for the month no matter what, and then pay more when I can until the last payday before the next statement close, when I again hold back the minimum payment so I know with 100% certainty that I will be able to pay at least that much.
Without COVID I would probably have just paid the BT card off entirely. But just being very cautious right now. I didn't apply for the Double Cash because it was a BT card, mainly because it is now my best rewards card, and I'm not planning on moving it off the FU for now, but it was just a nice bonus to know it is available if I need it. I know lenders don't know intent, but if I never transfer anything and just keep the balance at zero on the DC then I hope it wouldn't be seen as too risky.
Overall I'm happy. The one thing I haven't done and probably should have before getting these last cards is to try to find a better car loan. If I can get a decent one and keep paying what I have been paying, I can have it paid off in less than two years, which would then free up a good amount of money that I could start putting in savings. So by the end of 2021 or early 2022, I should be totally debt free with some cards that have aged for a while. Can't wait!
@eleven_eighteen That's great to hear! Keep reading the forums. There is so much great information here to help you form a strategy. Sounds like you're off to a great start!
Congrats and keep up the hard work, credit is a marathon!
Congrats on your approvals. Sounds like the start of. Great journey!
Congratulations you have made a great success thru achievement with your new cc. I wouldn't worry about the decline with Amx as it a sign that you are applying for alot of cc. Relax and enjoy what you have accomplished go to the garden and in a year or so then reapply for the Amx Blue!👍
Congrats on your credit success! You have some really nice cards. I just wanted to bring up that you should be able to pc your Capital One Platinum to the no annual fee Capital One Quicksilver.
If you do a search on the forum, you should see the link to check. Just something to think about.