Secured Card VS. My Jewelers Club

[Bronk33]

In the last 6 months, I've been cleaning up my reports and concentrating on building good credit. With that, I've gone from 519 to 631.

I have the Discover IT secured card and love it. I've had it for about 4 months and I know they will upgrade me to unsecured soon.
I also have a fingerhut account, and they just upgraded me to a revolving credit line today for $400 (not sure if that will raise my score when it hits next month). I also have a Self Lender account of $500. I dont know if that actually helped my score at all.

I'm looking for at least one more option. I can't get a cap 1 secured because they were my one problem years ago. 
I know there are a few other secured options like Citi but I was wondering if you guys think the $5k limit at My Jewelers Club would be a better option instead of another secured card.

Thanks for you opinions!

[FireMedic1]

I would go with a secured card that will graduate. But your limited. Cap1 doesnt graduate right now for whatever reason. In fact self lender has a secured card now like open sky and no HP that was recently reported and reports to all 3. If you get 1 more card. You'll have the 3 revolvers and a loan. FICO doesnt care about limits on cards. Its whats reported each month util-wise. These clubs I am not a fan of. Then it will be build time by aging your accounts and letting your scores raise up some more. And finish off the baddies you say your working on.

If you let us know what they are. We mightbe able to help you clear them up depending on who it is. Good Luck!

[Bronk33]

Baddies across all 3 are:
Cap 1 card that was charged off
Credit One card that was charged off
Express card that was charged off

All during the same, rough time in life about 2016/2017.

They are the last bad accounts on my reports, all else is good now. I've tried multiple methods to get them removed to no avail.
And they are all the reasons I can't get any other type of accounts opened.

[FireMedic1]

Have they been PIF yet?

[Bronk33]

No they were charged off over 2 years ago and they wont allow me to pay on them anymore.

[FireMedic1]

Huh? Were they sold to any collection agency?

[Bronk33]

Yes, but I was able to get those collection accounts removed.

[FireMedic1]

Well thats good news. Even though 2 will stay on your reports. Its been posted that Credit One will do GW's. But going from 3 CO's to 2 wont do too much repair to the scores. Express I'm not sure about. Cant find a success story. It doesnt hurt to try. Cap1 is a lost cause unfortunatley. Either way as they age it will sting less with time. It will go by fast.

[BallBounces]

---

@Bronk33 wrote:

In the last 6 months, I've been cleaning up my reports and concentrating on building good credit. With that, I've gone from 519 to 631.

I have the Discover IT secured card and love it. I've had it for about 4 months and I know they will upgrade me to unsecured soon.
I also have a fingerhut account, and they just upgraded me to a revolving credit line today for $400 (not sure if that will raise my score when it hits next month). I also have a Self Lender account of $500. I dont know if that actually helped my score at all.

I'm looking for at least one more option. I can't get a cap 1 secured because they were my one problem years ago. 
I know there are a few other secured options like Citi but I was wondering if you guys think the $5k limit at My Jewelers Club would be a better option instead of another secured card.

Thanks for you opinions!

---

Congratulations so far.

I will offer my opinion, and it is just that, an opinion of what I would do in your shoes.  

A few things:

1) What are your FICO 08 scores?  You just mention 'scores' but no detail. Be specific, it matters.

2) I would not rush.  In fact, I would do nothing at this point until I looked at FICO scores on about October 3rd.  May as well see what the calendar changes in 2 weeks.

3) I might wait even longer before doing anything depending on those new scores.

4) I would not get a MJC account, period, regardless of path forward.  No chance.

5) A securd card is not a bad option, perhaps, but I would also strongly consider a useful achievable store card.  The Amazon sync card may not be out of reach, and is a steal for Amazon shoppers.  There are plenty of other Sync cards that may be good candidates.   This may make more sense than a secured card especially if it has a long grauation term. I would ONLY look at secured cards that graduate.

Sync often divides people.  My belief for many rebuilders is that it represents the best and most realistic, achievable path to credit rebuilding with responsible use and application.  

[calyx]

I would advise a secured card that graduates over MJC or any "paid for" credit lines because you'll (eventually) lose the tradeline history when you stop paying (plus, that's a lot of money you aren't getting back).  But I also echo the advice to keep working on your credit/collections, etc, and don't rush.

What I did was make a list of cards I wanted, and looked to see if any of the banks had secured cards that would graduate that I could also PC.  I had an Opensky card because no one would approve me even for a secured card to start (my scores were way lower than yours).

I wanted a Cash+, so I went with USBank's secured Visa (graduates and allows for PC, their cobranded/other secureds graduated but did now allow for the PC to Cash+).
I wanted a DoubleCash, so I went with Citi's secured.
I wanted Discover, but by then I prequaled for their unsecured card.

Make a list of goal cards  you think you might want, and see if there's a (albeit slower) path to them through secured cards.   It also helps your relationships with the banks, even if you don't directly want a graduated card (if I wanted the USB AR, I now have a vanilla Visa and year+ history with them, and they like that).

I had other options - TD Bank's graduates, my CUs' (multiple) secureds graduate (I honestly wish I'd researched this better, because I think this was a better option), and there are other CUs that have secured cards that graduate.

I know people fixate sometimes on whether or not a tradeline reports as secured or not (for manual review), but I got a 17k CSP from Chase with two secured cards reporting as secured.  I really, really don't think it hurts (and my CSP app went in for manual review, so clearly their UW dept didn't mind).

Because I started my credit later in life (40s), I wanted to make sure I could not just get cards, but make sure I could get the longest tradelines possible, even if it meant just one year more.