A year ago, living in Toronto Canada, I accepted a job in Seattle, with a starting date in October. I took an advanced trip to scout things out and while there tried to get a US mobile phone: denied. No credit. At all. Had to accept prepaid.
Thus began my journey to build US credit. Today one year later I have the six cards in my siggy and a score of 733.
I got a few breaks early that really helped. My Canadian bank, RBC, owns a small subsidiary in the US which was willing to extend a US credit card based solely on my Canadian credit. I got the RBC Visa before I even had my SSN.
The next three came easy too. Local BoA and FirstTech branches had a relationship with my employer and were willing to extend cards to me based on my job offer. I also took advantage of the Amex Global Transfer program to move my Canadian Costco Amex to a US BCE card.
At this point I had four cards and I figured things were easy so I applied for a Chase card. Denied. Because without relationships like my Canadian bank, history with Amex, or between my employer and their local bank branches, in reality I still had no credit at all.
So I waited until I actually had a FICO, and in April finally applied for the PRG and Amazon Store Card. Those I got, but with tiny limits. Amazon card issued with a $300 limit and Amex site indicated I would be declined over about $500 despite NPSL.
Since then I have been gardening and trying CLI's. I got my BoA card up to $12k and on my second round with Amex got the BCE up to $25k, my highest limit. Meanwhile over several months I finally got the Amazon card up to $2500. Others still sit at their original limits.
Mistakes along the way: that chase app was stupid, took a HP on all three bureaus and got nothing. My first Amex CLI I hadn't read this forum and went from 8k to 10k. Took a HP on BoA to go only from 8k to 12k. The FirstTech app was probably spurious and while it is nice that I got it, it isn't a great card and I may never use it.
But overall I'm happy with where I am. A key part of my plan was to app a lot of cards early to load my AAoA down, my AAoA at 9 months now with six accounts is only 4 months less than my oldest card at 13 months. That should protect my score well in future and those INQ's start to age off in November.
Next steps: I want to move my banking to a CU for which I will need a PLOC there for inexpensive overdraft safety net, I may need a car loan around November, and eventually a mortgage.
But I will stick to gardening at least until the end of November until after that first raft of inquiries age off.
That is my year in credit history, thanks for reading
Thus began my journey to build US credit. Today one year later I have the six cards in my siggy and a score of 733.
I got a few breaks early that really helped. My Canadian bank, RBC, owns a small subsidiary in the US which was willing to extend a US credit card based solely on my Canadian credit. I got the RBC Visa before I even had my SSN.
The next three came easy too. Local BoA and FirstTech branches had a relationship with my employer and were willing to extend cards to me based on my job offer. I also took advantage of the Amex Global Transfer program to move my Canadian Costco Amex to a US BCE card.
At this point I had four cards and I figured things were easy so I applied for a Chase card. Denied. Because without relationships like my Canadian bank, history with Amex, or between my employer and their local bank branches, in reality I still had no credit at all.
So I waited until I actually had a FICO, and in April finally applied for the PRG and Amazon Store Card. Those I got, but with tiny limits. Amazon card issued with a $300 limit and Amex site indicated I would be declined over about $500 despite NPSL.
Since then I have been gardening and trying CLI's. I got my BoA card up to $12k and on my second round with Amex got the BCE up to $25k, my highest limit. Meanwhile over several months I finally got the Amazon card up to $2500. Others still sit at their original limits.
Mistakes along the way: that chase app was stupid, took a HP on all three bureaus and got nothing. My first Amex CLI I hadn't read this forum and went from 8k to 10k. Took a HP on BoA to go only from 8k to 12k. The FirstTech app was probably spurious and while it is nice that I got it, it isn't a great card and I may never use it.
But overall I'm happy with where I am. A key part of my plan was to app a lot of cards early to load my AAoA down, my AAoA at 9 months now with six accounts is only 4 months less than my oldest card at 13 months. That should protect my score well in future and those INQ's start to age off in November.
Next steps: I want to move my banking to a CU for which I will need a PLOC there for inexpensive overdraft safety net, I may need a car loan around November, and eventually a mortgage.
But I will stick to gardening at least until the end of November until after that first raft of inquiries age off.
That is my year in credit history, thanks for reading
