@Bronze_kneecap wrote:Hi I want to thank the Members of Myfico Forums, you guys have been a great help to my credit journey. Few years ago I messed up my credit. I had a few charge offs from discover bank, Capital one bank, and Chase bank. After a year of Goodwill letters and email executives I was able to get all 3 charge offs removed. Now I have started to build my credit with a clean slate. Back in march 2025 I was approved for a Us bank secured credit card with $500 limit. I recently got a pre approval from capital one for savor, this morning I took the offer and was instantly approved for $500 limit. I have a few questions. What would be my next course should I wait and let the accounts age or should I try to apply for a new card to raise my overall limits? My current score is Experian 682 TransUnion 736 EQUIFAX 664 these are fico scores. I currently have no late payments no charge offs and no collection or public records. My current utilization is at 64%. Also I can't seem to understand why my EQUIFAX score is so low compared to other credit agency.
Congratulations on getting a clean slate, nicely done. As for what next, I'd recommend against applying for, and/or adding any addition cards or other credit accounts for a minimum of 6 months (preferably 8 to 12 months). In the meantime you're going to want to get your reported aggregate utilization down, preferably under 9% and also only on one card (let the other card report a zero balance). It's what is suppressing your scores now.
Being you have what would be considered a young/thin file your scores are going to be more reactive to reported balances so keeping them down and building positive payment history are going to go a long way towards much bigger and better things coming your way.
@Bronze_kneecap wrote:Hi I want to thank the Members of Myfico Forums, you guys have been a great help to my credit journey. Few years ago I messed up my credit. I had a few charge offs from discover bank, Capital one bank, and Chase bank. After a year of Goodwill letters and email executives I was able to get all 3 charge offs removed. Now I have started to build my credit with a clean slate. Back in march 2025 I was approved for a Us bank secured credit card with $500 limit. I recently got a pre approval from capital one for savor, this morning I took the offer and was instantly approved for $500 limit. I have a few questions. What would be my next course should I wait and let the accounts age or should I try to apply for a new card to raise my overall limits? My current score is Experian 682 TransUnion 736 EQUIFAX 664 these are fico scores. I currently have no late payments no charge offs and no collection or public records. My current utilization is at 64%. Also I can't seem to understand why my EQUIFAX score is so low compared to other credit agency.
Good luck on your credit rebuilding journey. You've received good advice so far from Joe Rockhead, et al. Credit strategies are cumulative, so the more of them you use, the better. Being a member here and asking questions is an excellent first step. A key element is patience. Many who are new to credit, upon their first approval, go ballistic and yearn for multiple approvals in a short time. The proverbial, "It's a marathon, not a race," couldn't be more applicable.
I'm going to respectfully disagree with some of the other suggestions here. Particularly the notion of not worrying about reported utilization, and adding another card, and/or an SSL in the immediate future.
The reality is the OP barely got an approval from Cap One, and the other being a secured line. Although the OP has a clean slate, they had several charged off accounts. The cause of them ending in a charged off status aside, would obviously indicate the inability to pay, and/or poor management of their credit.
The suggestion I made for them to get their utilization down, and keep it down is twofold.
- With the use of trending data, and predictive scores like VS 4 and Fico 10T becoming more popular and widely used, it would be a great idea to start setting a good "trend" of keeping one's reported utilization in check so as to realize the maximum benefit (higher scores down the road) of a longer trend/history of low reported utilization.
- Because of the self admitted mistakes of allowing several accounts to go into CO status, it would also be fair to suggest that the OP needs to learn how to better manage their credit. This can be done by treating credit cards how they should be treated, which is like debit cards.
- Bonus for the OP... Lenders know what is spent on their accounts whether it posts, or not. Continuing to allow a higher utilization to report on one account doesn't look good when the other lender is doing follow up SPs to see how you're managing your credit. If the monthly spend is around the same amount, regardless of the statement balance being PIF, it can still look as though you're carrying a sustained balance. Not good for a young/thin file.
Granted, $1,000 in TCL is low, but it's also an amount that should be easy to keep under control. If someone can't manage $1,000, what are they going to do when those limits and new accounts become much, much more? The point being is there's no better time to start improved habits now on the very fortunate clean slate that's been granted.
While I'll agree that having 3 accounts is better for things like practicing AZEO, and with no other open loan adding an SSL will add to credit mix as well as help garner some temporary inflated points, as @indiolatino61 pointed out, this is a marathon, not a sprint. I'll also point out another saying... Finances over Fico. Don't try to add accounts for the sake of adding accounts in an attempt to speed up the process of inflating your scores.
For many people, it seems the more they demonstrate they don't need the credit, the more that's thrown at them by way of pre-approved offers, instant approvals, elevated SUBs, lower APRs, higher limits, etc.
Very well done! Keep it up. Remember, patience is the name of the game. Sometimes I have issues with that as well. You should definitely not apply for any additional cards for at least 6 months. Preferably, you should wait for a year before you apply for anything else. You should also consider paying your card off multiple times a month, while your limit is that low, to ensure your utilization is at least under 29%, preferably under 9% when they cut your statement.
