The point about SDFCU is that (like USAA) they understand the situation of Americans abroad. I and my daughter have been SDFCU members since 1972 (she was born about 1970 and I joined the State Dept in '72). She barely used her account over the years, once it had to be reclaimed from the Virginia abandoned property office. She now has a substantial credit balance linked to her Fidrlity Roth IRA and investment a/c. Since 1991 she's been AU on my Amex green that I no longer use but has 300k of points on it. As a result her credit score was 777. She applied for a Chase Sapphire Preferred and was declined. (We live together with her autistic son and we use my Chase Sapphire Reserve for 90% of purchases in US & UK where we have homes. Her son is an Alan Turing type ASD and the UK offers him about $40,000 in financial support (incl a bilingual teaching aide to help him
payvattention when his mind wanders b/c his intellect is a few years ahead of the 2nd grade class; he's always thinking about Scratch programming in his head) which is why he goes to (French, he's bilingual) school there. The USA has no such support programs. My daughter's only mortgage is a UK apartment.) To my great surprise she was refused by Chase, probably she should have sought a Chase Freedom card but that one has 3% forex loading and she wanted the 60k joining points and no loading.) SDFC initially denied her a $5k unsecured SDFCU cc and we phoned to complain. On reconsideration they granted it, first asking for a copy of her US driver license and UK mortgage statement. Although bureaucratic and with a confounding telephone menu (not like the olden days when they had a special phone number for overseas that got you direct to a specialist desk), we're satisfied with the solution. She now has a US card in her own name, no fee, no forex charges. She also has a UK Amex she recently got with approval online. I made them change the "member since" date from 2020 to 1991 the date on her US green AU Amex and they did that without resistance.
SUMMARY: SDFCU is a good basic card for worldwide use. I use it only enough to keep it active because the Chase series of cards offers far better value even though the CSR costs $550 a year ($300 refunded with travel, free lounge access, generous points). If you don't get accepted first time with SDFCU you have an opportunity to appeal to a real panel of bankers who will reply within a week. SDFCU is happy to work with members assigned abroad. (So is USAA but they closed my daughter's IRA b/c of her foreign address and the US FATCA law (our only car (no loan: we've had this Saab for 12 years) is registered in UK and, retired, I no longer have an APO address; USAA do insure us). Fidelity is happy with our dual US-UK situation since we are based in the USA.). (In real life, putting virtually all our spending on CSR, we spend over $4k just using ApplePay and the SDFCU $5k limit will be insufficient some day. Unless she constantly pays down her balance with the app. But that's a problem for her when I am gone. Using a UK card means constantly wiring funds ($ to £) via OFX, a nuisance.)
PS my FICO score according to Chase hovers around 817 but it doesn't matter much since I'm disinvesting and not borrowing, all as part of my estate plan.
