@Anonymous wrote:Hello,
New here and have spent the past year slowly rebuilding my credit. After a lot of googling for information, I always wind up back here as you all are such a wealth of information.
In my 20's I abused credit, was very irresponsible, filed BK and divorced. Now in my 50's, for the first time since my divorce, I now have credit cards, but low balances, which help me manage low expenditures, but these low balances also give me small LTV ratio's, which are keeping my scores down (I'm assuming, I haven't pulled my fico's out lately, just using credit karma which i know is not totally accurate).
Question 1: In reading the forums here, it seems the goal is to have extremely high CL's...i'm wondering why, if its so important to keep low balances, why do we want five digit cl's? other than the fact that i'm finding obtaining credit my new addiction, we are working towards decreasing debt so why increase credit.?..
Question 2: In the next few months I plan to close my Credit One account. I've read in the past closing accounts hurts your score, is this true? To what extent and for how long?
Question 3: When I reach a 700 score I plan to apply for another card, an upgrade. My siggy should show what I have. I've banked with Chase forever, and would love a Chase Freedom, or a CapVenture, travel would be nice, rewards are great but I just upgraded my CapOneP to QS yesterday...
unless anyone has suggestions on what would be beneficial to my wallet. I have 2 derogs which will be falling off in a couple months, one loan that just started, no lates, just all new credit within the year.
Thanks for all your help, I really love this forum
1. Most people want high limits to help keep their utilization percentage low.
2. Usually it won't affect your score for 10 years, but regardless -- Credit One is a bad one and should be closed.
3. When you reach 700 your best Chase starter card would probably be Freedom or Freedom Unlimited.
@fltireguy wrote:
Why the high CL's ? That's a good question
I think it's a personal thing, well, at least in my case it is. I've had crappy credit pretty much all of my life. Before March 2016, at 50 years old, my highest CL ever was $1800 on a partially secured CapOne card. I set a goal, after reading posts on here for months- the goal was to have a high enough CL on a card to buy a new car with. Not that I ever would, or that a dealer would let me. But that was my goal. It took me a 15 months, and lots of hard work, but I went from a 535 TU in 11/2015 to my 757 that I have today. And, I went from $1800 in CL (excluding my car loan), to just north of $200k, with my highest CL being $23000 with NFCU, followed by $15k at PenFed. I finally got in with Chase, BofA, and other prime banks, as well as Amex. I did file BK years ago, but never burned any lenders thankfully
WOW! Your hard work has produced awesome results for credit improvement and credit value 
Job well done!
@HeavenOhio wrote:Both Credit One and Open Sky should be closed as soon as it's feasible. As SJ says, it's probable that those cards will remain on your reports for up to ten years. But even if they don't, your AAoA (average age of accounts), AoOA (age of oldest account), and AoYA (age of youngest account) are all young to begin with. If a closed account dropped off your report tomorrow, numbers aren't going to change by much, and you'll recover quickly.
It's not uncommon for builders and rebuilders to acquire some cards that aren't long-term keepers, i.e. cards from crummy banks, secured cards that don't graduate, or annual fee cards that can't be product-changed. Once they acquire decent replacement cards, it's fine to close the cards that are less than ideal.
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Thank you HeavenOhio, you've been very helpful
I def do plan on closing my CreditOne and Open Sky, although they've helped me start my credit journey I know I need to leave their nests, I'm just waiting a couple months for my 2 baddies to clear up, score will go up, and I would like to go for either a Chase (i think i'm at 4 inquiries right now being 1 year new with all of my credit rebuilding so I would like to obtain chase before I get to 5/24). I figured at least while I have those 2 it's keeping my uti lower than not having them ($750. & $200). My other 2 cards are only $750. & $500. so I'm not dealing with much to work with.
My delimma is which to apply to in what order. Is Chase out of my league? If so, I'll skip Chase for a couple years (
) and go for AmEx and Discover. I need a good travel rewards card in my wallet for sure, and I'd like to build my future cards that yeild high cl's.
@Anonymous wrote:___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
My delimma is which to apply to in what order. Is Chase out of my league? If so, I'll skip Chase for a couple years (
UPDATE: JUST CHECKED AND I HAVE 3 HARD INQUIRIES
@HeavenOhio wrote:Definitely wait for the baddies to clear up since you're so close. I think you can tolerate Credit One and Open Sky during that time frame.
In the meantime, check pre-qual sites. Chase, Capital One, and AMEX have particularly good ones. Look for a definite APR (e.g. 15%) or a low range (e.g. 14–16%) rather than a large range (12–24%). On those sites, a definite APR or a low range would indicate that your approval chances are good. A wide range should be condsidered as advertising. Some of the pre-qual sites aren't as good as these three. But you can use them to shop around.
If Chase looks good, try them first due to 5/24. Move on from there. Before applying for anything, check in here first with updated scores, etc. Get multiple opinions, and weigh what people have to say.
If possible, try to optimize the ulilization portion of your score by the time you want to apply for new cards. You can do that by having one card reporting a small balance (between $5 and 8.9% of its limit) with the rest of the cards reporting zero. You can use the cards as you've been using them now. Just pay them down to the desired balance before the statements cut. With fees, this might be tough to do with Credit One and Open Sky. If that's the case, come as close as you can to optimizing.
OMG OMG OMG I followed your advice and went online searching for pre-qual so I went to Chase, filled out a pre-qual and the page lead me to another saying it won't do a hard pull, then another page....the answer came back APPROVED $2,000. a card will arrive in 7 days!!!! So much for a pre-qual, not sure how it went further into a full application process but I am hugely thrilled, relieved I finally got Chase out of the way, I've been banking with them since before they were Chase (WaMu). $2,000 I'm having a heart attack right now lol!!! Thank you HeavenOhio
I feel nervious and happy all at once.
Congratulations!
There'll be a hard pull or possibly two since you went through the whole process. But checking for pre-approvals is always a soft pull.
Once you receive and activate this card, I think you can go ahead and close Credit One. At some point when you receive another major card, you can jettison Open Sky. After that, you shouldn't have to close anything unless it's no longer useful to you.
Just so you're aware, there's a little bit of a twist as far as how Chase cards report to the credit bureaus. Like most cards, Chase reports the statement balance on the statement date. But they'll also report zero whenever you pay to zero. That's generally a great thing. The exception would be if you're relying on a Chase card to be the one that reports a positive balance. You can make a Chase card continuously report a positive balance without paying interest. Feel free to ask if you ever need to know how. But it's generally easier to rely on a card from another bank to report the positive balance and simply allow Chase to do its thing and report zero.
@Anonymous wrote:
@HeavenOhio wrote:Definitely wait for the baddies to clear up since you're so close. I think you can tolerate Credit One and Open Sky during that time frame.
In the meantime, check pre-qual sites. Chase, Capital One, and AMEX have particularly good ones. Look for a definite APR (e.g. 15%) or a low range (e.g. 14–16%) rather than a large range (12–24%). On those sites, a definite APR or a low range would indicate that your approval chances are good. A wide range should be condsidered as advertising. Some of the pre-qual sites aren't as good as these three. But you can use them to shop around.
If Chase looks good, try them first due to 5/24. Move on from there. Before applying for anything, check in here first with updated scores, etc. Get multiple opinions, and weigh what people have to say.
If possible, try to optimize the ulilization portion of your score by the time you want to apply for new cards. You can do that by having one card reporting a small balance (between $5 and 8.9% of its limit) with the rest of the cards reporting zero. You can use the cards as you've been using them now. Just pay them down to the desired balance before the statements cut. With fees, this might be tough to do with Credit One and Open Sky. If that's the case, come as close as you can to optimizing.
OMG OMG OMG I followed your advice and went online searching for pre-qual so I went to Chase, filled out a pre-qual and the page lead me to another saying it won't do a hard pull, then another page....the answer came back APPROVED $2,000. a card will arrive in 7 days!!!! So much for a pre-qual, not sure how it went further into a full application process but I am hugely thrilled, relieved I finally got Chase out of the way, I've been banking with them since before they were Chase (WaMu). $2,000 I'm having a heart attack right now lol!!! Thank you HeavenOhio
Congratulations Which card did you go for?