@Anonymous wrote:
Hello Everyone,
I am new to myfico and would greatly appreciate some help or advice! To try to make a long story short, I will make it into bullet points.
- Current Experian: 691.
- End of 2014 I was involved in a serious motor vehicle accident.
- I was in my senior year of college at the time of the accident, but recently graduated in December of 2015.
- The accident resulted in me needing two surgeries and I have been unable to drive or work for the majority of the time after the accident to now, which resulted in me tapping into my line of credit to support myself financially.
- My line of credit at my credit union is currently maxed out at $7,500.
- I do not owe any student loan debt (Thanks Mom & Dad!) and currently do not have any other form of debt beyond my $7,500 line of credit.
- I have been living at home with my parents and have a full time job offer that was supposed to start the first week of Jan. 2016, unfortunatly after each Dr. visit I keep having to move my work start date back. It is anticipated to be Feb. 15, so soon hopefully!
- I move into a new appartment with my girlfriend a week before my start date and do not have any money to pay for anything besides rent for the first month.
- I will be recieving a $4,000 signing bonus once I start my job, which will really help my credit utilization (Main factor of my score dropping over the last year from 760 to 691.) Unfortunatly, about half of the $4,000 will need to be used to purchase furniture for the new apartment and business dresswear.
- I will be applying for another credit card in the near future regardless, but I wanted to know if I should wait to pay off more of my line of credit and rebulid my score before doing so or if I should just do it now?
- My idea was to apply for a chase slate card and make a balance transfer and just pay off the $7,500 within the 0% promo period. Once this was paid off I was going to get a card that actually gives me some kind of reward for my spending.
- I will most likely not be in a situation where I have to max out a card again. I am a responsible buyer but the car accident changed circumstances for everything in my life.
Thank you in advance! I am very excited to see any responses!
Matt
Welcome Matt,
First where are these scores from? Are the real FICO's?
If they are from Credit Karma or something like that then spend a buck and get the $1-7 day trial at Creditchecktotal.com.You will get your true FICO8 scores and all 3 bureau reports so you can get a real time snap shot of your current credit picture. Just be sure to cancel before the week is up.
Second, I wouldn't worry about the high UTI right now and I sure wouldn't spend every dime of that bonus. You'll have some out of pockets that you can't anticipate and you need a few bucks in a rainy day fund. Also, most relationships break up over lack of money so don't start out broke...
You should have 3 CC's reporting to get the best scoring opportunities and that can be accomplished several ways.
Check with where ever you have your LOC and see if they will offer you an unsecured CC.
Go the the following link and see what Cap 1 pre-qual may offer you. https://www.capitalone.com/credit-cards/
They have some great products and they will allow your CL's to grow fairly quickly.
Try to avoid having to tie up money in a secured card unless you run out of options. If your true FICO is really that high you should check out the Discover pre-qual site (google it). They are known to be very friendly toward students and folks with very thin files so they are a great start-up to have.
You will come out of this with a few HP's on your report but you want to make them count with approvals so don't apply for anything where you can't get a pre-peek to check your qualifications then it wil be an HP only if you decide to follow through and apply for the product.
Just having these 3 new accts open will drop you UTI without paying a dime out of pocket. All this wil take a couple of months to fully kick in as some accts don't start reporting right away but have patience. You're at the beginning of your credit life so just don't get frazzled, know that all good things come to those who wait and settle in for the long haul.
EDIT: Not sure about the Chase card app but they have a good Pre-qual site that will tell you if you qualify for any of their products. Go there first and don't just blindly app not knowing if you have a shot. I've read here where no Pre-qual is 100% but some sites are better than others at approving what they recommend through their sites. You can always search on these forums for info on all kinds of questions but be creative with how you input the search info as you will get different results with different wording.
