College Student Advice

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

I want to start by thanking this forum and its members by helping me establish a good foundation in the credit game. I am in my third year at my university and I am very interested in building my credit for buying a home and maybe a car but also for the sake of raising my credit limit for fun. Now I am looking for advice on how to continue growing my credit limits and raise my credit score.

I obtained my first credit card in April of 2017 with BofA's Travel Rewards Card ($700). I have since obtained more cards and raised the limits on a few of them. The current line up is as follows:

($2,500) BofA Travel Rewards

($8,000) Banana Republic Visa

($2,000) Amex Blue Cash Everyday

($5,100) Amazon Prime Visa

($2,500) Wells Fargo Propel

The Prime and Propel cards were my goal for a while due to their rewards, looks, and their weight! I applied for and received both of them in January of 2019. I have no student loans or any other lines of credit. I do have a high number of inquiries (9) from being denied from the Prime card twice before and from making the mistake of requesting a CLI from BofA. All of them except the two most recent ones will fall off my report by the end of 2019.

Lastly, the WF Propel card has a high spending requirement for its intro bonus and I have 72 days to spend $2,750 of the $3,000 requirement. I would really like to earn this bonus but of course, I am not going to spend that much for the bonus. Don't know how to reach it.

Again, thank you all so much for the advice over the years. I am excited to see where everything goes.

Best,

Rojas

[Pikaboo-icu]

Welcome in out of the shadows!

Congrats on your progress, you have done very well.

Gardening?? 

[AverageJoesCredit]

Just a reminder we do not discuss MS here on myFico due to our TOS. Thank you for understanding

It does stink when we cant get or meet the SUB but its never good to spend more thsn you afford to meet the SUB. It has happened to me on occasion, not meeting the SUB and actually just got the Propel but no Sub due to having gotten one previously with my Cashwise. Its good though no pressure

I think you should continue to garden abit, you have some nice cards and youll be in a better position once you finish school and start msking more money. Good luck and thanks for sharing

[Anonymous]

congrats! you did well so far, you have a set of card that should help with all category and non-category spending. Gardenning for 6 months at least from now.

For propel spending requirement, lot of things you can do:

• Over-pay your utility bills, electricity, internet, water, car insurance, rent.
• Goto a local store and buy some gift card for places you shop. don't buy too large an amount, perhaps 100 each time or so. lol (Propel currently has the CVS offer through "earn more mall" 40pts per dollar spend, you can activate it online, then goto cvs buy a up to $62.5 gift card or item, after points reward, its effectively 40% off.)
• Buy some airline gift card if you have any plan of traveling down the road
• Pay your tuition.

If you don't have these spending, ask your family and friends and see if they have them, you can offer to pay with your card, and ask them send you a check.

Good luck! propel is a wonderful card, if you can wait, keep all the points and apply for wells visa sigg in October, that way, each go far point will worth 1.5c when redeemed for travel. 30000 points will become $450.

[Anonymous]

Congratulations!!...keep up the great work....