Brand New Credit History - Looking for some advice

[Anonymous]

Hello everyone, here is my situaltion. I recently moved back to the states after spending nine years in South America. And had no idea how FICO worked. Or the fact my entire credit history had disappeard.

I applied for a Capital One Platinum Card (and of corse) was denied. I saw a credit karma commercial and started an account and found out I was a N/A (no) score, and nothing on my report. After some research, I opened a secured Discover It (200 secured limit) card 6 weeks ago. And my score went to a 661 on credit karma after it reported with a 5% UTIL. Four weeks ago I applied for a Capital One card and was approved (300 SL). Which dropped my score too 657.

My first month report shows three HPs. 5% UTIL. 1 account. 100% payment.

661 TRANSUNION

661 EQUIFAX

664 EXPERIAN (I paid for a myFICO soft pull tonight to get the third report, it shows 0% UTIL after i requested Discover do a Off Cycle Report last week to see the diffrence in points based on UTIL.)

I curretly am using the C.O. card and making weekly payments to keep the UTIL to 5%. Using the credit simulator i can raise my score to a 690 if i add $800 to my secure line of credit on my Discover It card.

My gaol is three fold.

1. Raise my CLI on my Capital One card.

[I read that if I keep making lots of payments I have a chance of getting a CLI on my unsecured (Capital One) card as soon as my second cycle?]

2. Get a AMEX Green charge card as soon as possible. Its mostly just to finally have an AMEX.

[With 36k income, is this realistic?]

3. Get My score to a 710 by July for the purchace of a new car.

Any and all advice would be greatly taken as I can see there are alot of credit experts on this page. Thanks in advance everyone!

[Anonymous]

First piece of advice, disregard the CK scores. They are "educational" scores, not used by (m)any lenders, therefore don't correspond to what will actually help you. There are several ways to get free scores from some of the credit bureaus e.g. creditscorecard from Discover (EX),  Discover's credit score service (TU), also EX offers its credit scores free on its websites now. There are more.

Personally, since I am rebuilding, I have just committed to paying for my first 1-2 years of rebuilding for a service that gives me monthly FICO8 scores. After I reach at least 700s (or if I do really well and reach mid-high 700s??) I will cancel and just keep managing things responsibly and let my score fall where it will, unless I have a need (e.g. applying for mortgage). I use Experian's creditworks, $19.99/mo for all 3 bureaus and am pretty happy with it but everyone is different.

Second piece of advice. The one and only app I would do before July, is a SSL, if you do not have any installment loans (but you said you have zero history other than the new Cap). Do you by chance have any family who are/were service members? This may give you an "in" to Navy Federal Credit Union NFCU. They offer Share Secured Loans also called credit builder loans. This helps your credit mix which gives you a bump in your credit score. You have to have at least a few hundred dollars in savings available to start the loan, but you pay it down almost immediately and leave it at ~90% paid off. We used to use Alliant for this but they recently stopped offering the loan, and now NFCU is pretty much the only national CU that offers the loan with the correct requirements - but a local CU may also give you what you need. You can search these forums for SSL technique for more. 

I would definitely not app any cards before your car loan. You can check out the Auto Loans forum and ask them for more specific advice, they can help get you on the right path. 

As far as #1, second cycle is pretty aggressive, I can't help you there. I've heard of people having luck with third cycle. Keep in mind Cap1 watches your activity across all accounts when considering you for CLIs. 

I do not know much about Amexes so I also can't help with #2.

Best of luck OP