I had a good credit report until a few years ago. The hardest part with bad credit was having a hard time renting an apartment even with a good job. But now I've got 2 cards I'm OK with keeping long term, and things seem to be looking up. Doing things responsibly now.
FICO is 588. I opened the Self credit builder in Nov 2021, and just got my money back this week. Sucked to pay for credit but I preferred to do that then go the secured card route, although I ended up getting their secured card too. But no hard pulls. Going to close that in the next few months before the AF hits ($750 limit, $675 of it is my deposit)
Oct 1 I got the PayPal ($1,200) and Venmo ($900) cards. Surprised I got approved, as it doesn't look like I'd get approved for anything else right now, but I loved the no hard pull if denied thing. I do have an account in collections that's 3 years old but now my only inquiries are for those two cards I just got.
I did travel cards in the past, but it'll be a while before I can get approved for those again. I do all my banking with Fidelity, so I'd love their card but that's probably at least a year away from meeting criteria for approval. Just gonna keep running everything through PayPal/Venmo, hopefully get some CLIs from Synchrony, and see where that puts me in 6 months or so.
