Question Regarding Secured VS Unsecured CC's

[Anonymous]

Very confused, to date I have read.

1. All CC's report to the CRA's the same whether secured or unsecured.

2. Secured and Unsecured CC's DO report differently.

3. A Secured CC will possibly hurt your credit rating as creditors look at this.

4. Almost ALL secured CC's report as unsecured nowadays. Hardly any of them report as Secured.

Any idea which is absolutely correct? My wife and I have less than $500 worth of revolving credit and it's killing our score. A local CU offers secured CC's but claim that it is reported as Secured. I chatted with someone at Wachovia, reported as secured. I wanted to deal with someone local, preferrably a CU so that in the future I could get a better deal on an auto loan and there are no other CU's around here.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

[enerey]

I don't know about secured vs. unsecured as I've never had a secured card. However, you could try to get a crown jewelers account, they are easy to get, no credit check, and start you with a $2500. limit. They only report to TU and EX.

[llecs]

Nearly all CCCs report to all 3. As Enerey pointed out, some do not.

Secured and unsecured sometimes report differently, but that doesn't matter to your score or via a manual review by a lender.

Secured CCs do not hurt anything...my FICOs are in the mid to high 600s and I still have 1 secured CC reporting. And I never ever had any problems. *ran back to check, my only secured stopped reporting as secured at some point in time. Maybe I can get my $500 back*

Many still report as secured, which is OK. My BofA reported as secured before it unsecured itself. I still have a secured Orchard that is reporting that way.  *not anymore*

Again, the secured reference doesn't hurt one bit. You can easily have an 800 FICO score with only $500 in CLs, so as long as your mix of credit and utilization are in check. I'd suggest going for the secured. And ask if they will unsecure it in the future, like BofA does.