Building credit as a new immigrant - next steps?

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I recently moved to the US with my partner and we are keen to build a good credit score.

So far we have the following between us:

Me:

American Express Everyday - $8000

Capital One Quicksilver Visa - $300 (Product changed from Journey after the first statement cut, enrolled in credit steps up to $500)

Partner:

American Express Premier Rewards Gold - NPSL

Capital One Journey Visa - $300 (Will convert to Quicksilver ASAP)

Discover it - $1250

The Amex cards were via Global Transfer from the UK - very handy! The accounts have all been open for a couple of months but some haven't started reporting yet.

We are AU's on each other's cards so should have 5 accounts reporting on our credit files shortly.

Should we be looking to get any more cards or is our current crop good enough for now?

[taxi818]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Hi,

I recently moved to the US with my partner and we are keen to build a good credit score.

So far we have the following between us:

Me:

American Express Everyday - $8000

Capital One Quicksilver Visa - $300 (Product changed from Journey after the first statement cut, enrolled in credit steps up to $500)

Partner:

American Express Premier Rewards Gold - NPSL

Capital One Journey Visa - $300 (Will convert to Quicksilver ASAP)

Discover it - $1250

The Amex cards were via Global Transfer from the UK - very handy!

We are AU's on each other's cards so should have 5 accounts reporting on our credit files shortly.

Should we be looking to get any more cards or is our current crop good enough for now?

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Welcome to USA. however after reading this. even though it is global from amex. you really don't need to do anything. have you been here 6 months yet?. or better worded. have you had your cards 6 months here yet?. if so. you will generate fico scores after that time. Dont over do it. and pay all on time. you are actually golden. more so than us born here. hehehe. as we have had many times to mess our credit up. from young age. just actually maybe pull your reports and scores from my fico here and monitor all. other than that. time is the key. Congrats and good luck.

[Kenny]

From a score maximization perspective, one only needs 3 cards for max scoring... so you should be fine. (I think 2 is OK as well, but I'm not 100% on it.)

I would ask you this: are you lacking in any spending ability per month? If not, then you can always hold off until 1 year of history and then apply for more cards that you better fit your spending patterns.

I think you're right on the PC to Quicksilver, great for you of thinking of this.

I'm always a fan of gardening if you've gotten solid cards (which you did) when you're building your credit. The capital one will grow with you, and if it doesn't like you want it to you can always involve the EO at 6 month intervals should the CLI not be what you want it to be.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the replies, almost all of our spending goes on the Amex cards, or Discover for the 5% categories. 

It's slightly annoying having to micro-manage the Discover card as $1250 isn't much - I've been making multiple monthly payments to bring the balance down so it can be used again but I'm just grateful they gave us a chance. Hopefully they will increase the limit after a few months.

So far the only thing I've used the Capital One cards for is car insurance and I've just sent a payment to clear the balance straight away.

I was expecting to have to get a load of rubbish secured cards but amazingly it's not turned out like that!

Back in the UK we have 7-8 cards between us, some with £30,000+ limits so it's strange having to worry about available credit again for the time being.

[Anonymous]

Just thought I'd update this 9 months on.

This is how things look at the moment after getting a couple of extra cards and CLI's:

Me:

American Express Everyday - $20,000 (Original CLI was $8,000, asked for a CLI to $20k and approved instantly so I probably should have gone for the full $24k but oh well!)

Capital One Quicksilver Visa - $1,300 ($300 - $800 - $1300)

Partner:

American Express Premier Rewards Gold - NPSL

Capital One Quicksilver Visa - $1,300 ($300 - $800 - $1300)

Discover it - $10,700 ($1250 - $1700 - $4700 - $7700 - $10700)

Chase Freedom - $1,500

There are still cards I'd like to add (Chase Sapphire Preferred, the new Freedom Unlimited when it arrives, IHG) but for now I'm pretty happy with how things are going.

[Anonymous]

great going so far

[Anonymous]

What credit cards or bank accounts do you have/had in the UK? I also immigrated to the US July last year from Brazil and HSBC help me a lot to establish my credit. I have a Brazilian bank account with them and they gave me a credit card in the US even before getting my SSN. Once I received my SSN, they started to report to the credit bureaus. So, if you have a bank account in the UK with a bank which has operations in the US, you should try to leverage on the relationship (as you did with Amex).

A few months after HSBC started reporting, I was able to get a Discover, Amex, CSP and Freedom.

I'm in the US for about 6 months and my FICO score is 740. 

Joster