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@CruzImperial wrote:To be honest, I managed to get away from the toy limits with the help of STORE CARDS.
That's right, how sad... but true, nevertheless. The lady who put $9999 as my monthly income in the hhgregg CC application surely did me a big favor. $5K instantly and surely would had been more if she would had raised the expected purchase amount.
Btw, I filled the form with my actual monthly income but looked like she just wanted to approve me no matter what lol
Just shows what a nice CS lady flirting with the customer is up to hahaha
well hello, where is this hhgregg you are talking about?? I should go and apply there. lol
@SoCalBound wrote:If I had to do my credit building all over again, I would have increased my initial secured credit card deposit, it would have saved so much time. If you can swing it, do it, if you can't swing it, try very very hard to.
Yeah I probably would have waited until my next payday and added more to my initial secured card limit. Had I been thinking, I would have gotten my secured card probably two years before I got it. I probably could have gotten at least 6 months before I did, but I got notification that I needed to verifiy my identitiy with my DL and possibly remove a fraud alert, I procrasitnated. I actually probably could have gotten a unsecured Capital One at that time.
@Jlu wrote:I went like this:
First Premier ---> Capital One ---> GE Capital ---> Barclays ---> Chase Freedom ---> Discover More ---> Anything you want basically
How long did you go between cards. What's the credit requirements for tht GE card and the starting limit compared to the First Premier and Capital one?
Secured cards and GECRB helped me move up faster. From there i guess its just been good payment habits- i've almsot always made payments before statements cut, though i do let balances report sometimes-and with BOA i have it set to pay ASAP statement balance(pretty much day after the statement cuts)
my secured cards started out at 600(boa) and 750(cap1) in August 2011. GECRB approved me for 1K paypal and 1.4K amazon in february 2012. Discover gave me 1K in March. I put down deposits to increse my secured cards to 1.2K each in April. GERCB Paypal increased me to 2K in June. BOA secured graduated in june, and i asked for a CLI in july, approved to 3K. Chase approved me for 3K and 5K cards this august. GECRB paypal increased me to 4K earlier this month. And now BOA approved 3K to 6K limit today. MY BoA is my most used card in general, but i still dont actually have a single month with even 1K usage. I'm sure that would help get some auto-increases so no hard pulls, but it's not always absolutely necessary to be constantly using 20-30 percent of a your limit(paying in full if you do of course!)
@CruzImperial wrote:
If you are going to apply to ge just because of the sp cli and to raise your cls, please go for Lowes and wally. They grow super fast.
We were both actually looking at one of the Walmart cards. I'm still working on getting my score up high enough to qualify. I have one Capital one card that has not get it's increase up to $500, and one secured card I probably need to add a few hundred dollars to. My friend has scores in the high 600s, but I'm still not sure if anyone would approve her for another card right now with her only have a capital one for about a year still at the first increased limit of 500 and a car loan that's barely 4 months old.
store cards and a little gardening.
started this year jan (12')
with a 2.5k limit best buy store card
macy's 100 limit.
and kohls 400 limit.
now i have
9 cc and an installment loan.
only three cards are below 2k. max is 3.5k.
saw my bosses cc(same card i have) today. 15k limit =/ hes only a few years older then me so i guess its a step in the right direction.
Current: Fico ScoresEQ~706 TU~719 EX 709 4/28/23 Inquiries (24 Months): EQ 0 TU 0 EX 0| Most Recent: A LONG WHILE | Buy A Home Earn Cash Back | Amex Zync(Unicorn) Chase Freedom$1500 Discover IT$7,400 Citi DC $10,000 Citizens Mastercard$7,000 |
With such a short history, your best ally is time. As others on here have said, if you've got some history with the bank that holds your checking/savings/etc. accounts, and if they offer credit cards, that would be a good place to start.
One of the better articles on Hard pull v. Soft pull can be found here:
As I posted before, watch out for hard pulls. I had worked my way back up to 690 by simply paying low limit cards off each month (which was a pain, since any large purchase had to be made on an AmEx Business Platinum card, which must be paid in full each month). I applied for a car loan in January. Lexus uses Toyoto Financial Services for low-interest finance. But they used a different service to "prep" the account, then used Toyota for the final. Fortunately, the pulls were within days of each other. After about 60 days, my FICO went from 688 to 690.
Using low-limit cards can be a hassle if you do any business traveling, so I used the "Credit Increase" link on a few cards and my lines were doubled. Not being the wiser, my request to Chase resulted in an email notice that they would have to run a credit check. Q: Did I wish to continue? A: Yes. A few days later, I received a letter advising me that my line would be increased, but not to the amount I requested (from 1404.00 to 2500.00) and they would round my line up to $1,900.00.
The lousy $500.00 is small compared to the monthly AmEx charges - but no one seems to care about AmEx.
The day the letter arrived, I received a credit watch from FICO, indicating my score had dropped to 675. Then, because my gas card reported balance jumped from the average monthly of around $125.00 to $197.00 because of a business trip and my statement had not been posted, another loss - of 2 points. Down to 673.
Two things you should do:
1. Make sure any increase will not result in a hard pull.
2. Try to determine when a company submits your data to their reporting agency and pay off or pay down any amounts about 10 days before the report date.
How will you know the date? There are ways that don't require you calling the vendor because they don't like to give out that information. More on that later.
I started with a Cap 1 $300 limit card, couple months later apped and approved for Chase Freedom for $500. Just a couple months after that I was preapproved from Discover for $3000 limit. Since the Discover I gardened for about 6 months or so, finally went on an app spree and was approved for quite a few cards with ok limits, time to go back in the garden now to let those limits increase.