No credit card required
Browse credit cards from a variety of issuers to see if there's a better card for you.
Hello again, all.
I have attempted to research this, but keep coming up empty. Does anyone have a fairly good guess as to which unsecured cards are most likely to approve low scores. What I'm attemping to do is minimize hard inquiries in building up the unsecured credit card accounts. Something like an algorithm for applying. For example, I know that FPB will approve most anyone (which is the only unsecured I have now, 6 months old).
Which company would be best to try next (2nd easiest to get approved for), and after that company (3rd easiest), etc etc. Also, what amount of time to wait between each application to maximize approval odds? I understand that this may not ultimately the best course of action for credit rebuilding, but assuming someone wanted to add 1 or 2 more unsecured card accounts it would atleast be a good direction to start in. Those hard inquiries get painful after awhile....
As always, thank you in advance!
Great question - can't wait to hear from the pros.
BTW, what's FPB stand for ?
Probably the next easiest to get an approval is Credit One Bank which is on par with FPB and also has terrible fees.
Getting a Kay's or Jared's card is exceptionally easy too if you have any established history but low scores.
cap1 is pretty easy approval on "platinum" card. i think $39 AF, and they pull all 3 CR's
At a swag:
First Premier
Credit One
Discover Matrix (Continental Finance, does this report to all 3 bureaus?)
The above all all relatively similar, and frankly if you have any money to put down as a deposit you're better off looking at secured options in my estimation. May actually be less in fees to take one of the $1000-2600 deep subprime unsecured loans, put $99 to Cap One, $300 to BOFA, and pay the rest back immediately. Small installment tradeline and two quality secured cards for pretty minimal interest, I haven't done the math but I suspect it might come out to less than FP's AF, need to pencil that out. Actually if you can afford to pay it off within a few months after that, think you're actually ahead even at the roughly 12% monthly APR on first real balance of $400.
Well that doesn't include the AF's for C1 / BOFA secured; however, since one needs two tradelines at a minimum for optimal building, adding another $90+ to the FP tradeline for a either Credit One or I think more for the Matrix card, looks like come out a non-trivial amount ahead and have way better tradelines + small installment line. Am I missing something here because I've never seen that suggested previously?
Capital One is next on the list. May be some store cards mixed in there as another poster suggested, and there's a non-trivial amount of distance between FP and C1 unsecured.
The only issue I see is you want to be establishing positive history right now.
Unless call it $400 is going to make a material difference to your aggregate debt, or even $200, open up a couple tradelines now, maybe even 2 Cap One secured at $99.
However much time it takes to get your negatives sorted, the tradelines will put you that much further ahead almost 1:1 when it comes to building the positive portion of your credit file.