Question about Bank of America card and more ??

Anonymous · ‎09-26-2017

My husband is a fairly new US Permanent resident (April of this year). As such, he had to start credit all over again. To date he has a $1200 secured NFCU card, an UNsecured USAA card of $1500, an UNsecured Capital One card of $5000, and a secured Bank of America card of $500. We put $500 down and (wrongly) assumed they would look at his credit and possibly offer him a larger SL. He has no installment loans, so we are going to get a secured loan from Alliant as soon as they approve his membership.
My question is, is it worthwhile to keep the BoA card? In your opinion do you think it will grow with him and possibly graduate in 6 to 12 months? I've read mixed reviews. Also, do you have any further advice for me as far as helping his credit to grow? He wants to buy a new truck in March--it is an 18-wheeler truck and costs about $160,000 so I want his credit to be as good as possible so he'll get offered a competitive interest rate. Thank you!

Anonymous · ‎09-26-2017

He is also an AU on my Delta AMEX, Amazon Chase, and Sam's club card.

DeeBee78 · ‎09-26-2017

@Anonymous wrote:
My husband is a fairly new US Permanent resident (April of this year). As such, he had to start credit all over again. To date he has a $1200 secured NFCU card, an UNsecured USAA card of $1500, an UNsecured Capital One card of $5000, and a secured Bank of America card of $500. We put $500 down and (wrongly) assumed they would look at his credit and possibly offer him a larger SL. He has no installment loans, so we are going to get a secured loan from Alliant as soon as they approve his membership.
My question is, is it worthwhile to keep the BoA card? In your opinion do you think it will grow with him and possibly graduate in 6 to 12 months? I've read mixed reviews. Also, do you have any further advice for me as far as helping his credit to grow? He wants to buy a new truck in March--it is an 18-wheeler truck and costs about $160,000 so I want his credit to be as good as possible so he'll get offered a competitive interest rate. Thank you!

Keep the BoA card. It unsecures in as little as 7 months, and usually with a nice CLI. After that the CLI's are rarely automatic, but if customer-initiated they're usually generous (with a hard pull).

I started out with a $500 Better Balance Rewards card, and now have over $21K in credit with BoA.

Anonymous · ‎09-26-2017

Thank you @DeeBee. We'll hang on to it. Take care.

BronzeTrader · ‎09-26-2017

@Anonymous wrote:
My husband is a fairly new US Permanent resident (April of this year). As such, he had to start credit all over again. To date he has a $1200 secured NFCU card, an UNsecured USAA card of $1500, an UNsecured Capital One card of $5000, and a secured Bank of America card of $500. We put $500 down and (wrongly) assumed they would look at his credit and possibly offer him a larger SL. He has no installment loans, so we are going to get a secured loan from Alliant as soon as they approve his membership.
My question is, is it worthwhile to keep the BoA card? In your opinion do you think it will grow with him and possibly graduate in 6 to 12 months? I've read mixed reviews. Also, do you have any further advice for me as far as helping his credit to grow? He wants to buy a new truck in March--it is an 18-wheeler truck and costs about $160,000 so I want his credit to be as good as possible so he'll get offered a competitive interest rate. Thank you!

It takes time to build credit...