694 ex fico. Which card for cash back?

[Anonymous]

Hello everyone! Been reading and getting tips a lot from here and this past year been diligently working on improving my credit. As of February I was at a 534 ex FICO Score. Bad I know. Years ago I had a Bank of America credit card and at the stupid age of 19 ran it up and never paid it and it got closed. That finally fell off my credit report about 6 months ago and I was approved for a cap one platinum card (300$), Kohl’s card (300$) Victoria secret 350$, and my wife has me as an AU on her cap one platinum card (500$). I have been making payments and right now my utilization is at 24% (it’s actually lower because I paid off everything and waiting for one more card to report. I checked my Experian FICO this morning and I am a 694! I never thought it was possible. So I am expecting to be a little over 700 once the other card reports and my utilization goes down under 5%. What card should I apply for that has good cash back? I am finally at the point where I am responsible enough and my credit is high priority as I want to buy a house soon. Any input is appreciated. Right now there are no collections or “baddies” on my report,only the cards I mentioned that are at low utilization (0-5%).

[Anonymous]

Congratulations on your credit milestone. I think you can pre-qualify for Discover and AMEX given your current score. I am leaning more towards Discover since they seem to like thin rebuilder profiles. They offer a cashback match within your first year and 5% back on rotating categories per quarter. Down the road, you can add AMEX or any other prime lender you'd like as your profile continues to improve. That way, they start you off with a higher SL and better SUB. 

[xaximus]

Congrats on your rebuild so far! That's a great score and should definitely get you in to many CC lenders. I would recommend starting off with Discover - they have the CB match and also usually give decent to large CL's. Something that will definitely help your TCL and utlization. I would suggest waiting for your report to update so it shows your latest payment(s) and your scores to be the highest when you app. Best chance of getting a good SL.

Good luck!

[ChessChik47]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Congratulations on your credit milestone. I think you can pre-qualify for Discover and AMEX given your current score. I am leaning more towards Discover since they seem to like thin rebuilder profiles. They offer a cashback match within your first year and 5% back on rotating categories per quarter. Down the road, you can add AMEX or any other prime lender you'd like as your profile continues to improve. That way, they start you off with a higher SL and better SUB. 

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+1

[Anonymous]

Congratulations! In addition to Discover and Amex, you should be able to get a good prequalification offer from Capital One (a Quicksilver, which has 1.5% cash back rewards), and if you have a PayPal account and are interested, you should also be able to qualify for Synchrony's PayPal 2% Cashback Mastercard though they pull TU.

[Anonymous]

Yeah I’m definetly going to wait until everything updates to what my accounts currently are. My wife and I have a 2012 civic with 90k on it and have about 2 years left on the loan. Probably going to wait until it’s paid off to go for a new car. It would be nice to get a suv now especially with my son it’s hard getting him in and out of the backseat of our current car. But I don’t wanna screw myself going for a car loan now. I’d rather wait the two years until our current car is paid and then keep it as a second car and finance a newer suv. By that time hoping to be up around 800. Thanks for the replies and I think the quicksilver or discover it will be my next card. I’d like to have a good spending limit just to help keep my utilization low. I don’t spend much on my cards but it’d be nice to have that high spending limit so if I do use them,the utilization won’t go through the roof so easy.

[19eighty5]

Congratulations on your rebuild! Fantastic progress and good luck on the cash back card!

[JustBPatient]

I want to echo what others have said.  Discover is double cash back for the first year so even general spend is (2%) on top of categories which you can max out at 1500 per quarter (10%).  They also have a myriad of Discover deals, which all cash back would be doubled as well!!

Good luck! 

[xaximus]

On a side note - depending on what you owe for the Civic, you may be able to get rid of it if the value currently is more then what you owe. Carmax or Carvana will buy the car and pay you what the market value is. Usually with Honda's, they have good residual values, I would have the car checked out to see what they can give vs. what you owe. It may be worth it.

[Shooting-For-800]

I would look at Cap One and Discover prequals.

Both have treated me very well since my rebuild.

GL! - You are on your way!