When I started out my rebuild early in the year, I did a lot of things, some worked out good, others are just plain hilariously bad. I thought I knew what I was doing, and the internet cannot lie. Boy was I wrong, and I made a lot more work for myself than I needed to. I am just going to share, for any new folks showing up, the things I would not do again if I could start all over from February 2017.
1. Do not open more than three (maybe 4) revolving accounts, and no more than one or two of those should be store cards. Less is more once you have three cards, at least at first. You can rack up a monster credit limit of purely toy limit accounts (hey 20 accounts with 500 limits sure is 10,000, but eventually completely useless)
2. Do not, and I repeat, do not open an Indigo, Milestone, Credit One, Primor, Total Visa, or any other card with an Annual Fee equal to 1/4th of its starting limit. Most of these cards do not grow, have atrocious terms (some of them dont even have grace periods, you pay interest from the day the purchase appears in the account), or are nightmares to cancel. Open a secured card with Cap One, Discover, BoA, Citi, whoever, just do not pay 120+ dollars on a 300 dollar credit limit. Youd be better off just throwing your money in the trash, and I am dead serious. Instead, use that money to deposit on a secured card, youll get it back eventually, all cards either graduate or you can cancel for a refund once your profile has recovered. Just dont blow cold hard currency on "fees"
3. If you have heard of the Shopping Card Trick, forget about it right now. Do not use this. Comenity is not a bad bank. In fact for some things they are quite useful. The allure of softpull only instant gratification cards is a trojan horse though. What you end up with eventually is 20k of spending power for towels and blenders. I am not even joking. Only get cards you will actually use, and use a lot. For me, only one of my six Comenity accounts has proven to have any value to me over time. The others are just a waste of time (and honestly are only serving to solidify my AAoA right now). if you want a Comenity card for whatever reason, just get one the traditional way. They are pretty generous with limits, and if you actually shop at the store regularly, they are decent. But what use is a Victorias Secret Angel card to a mid 30s male who isnt into crossdressing? Know what I mean?
4. Cobranded store cards through Synchrony and Citi are good but be careful which ones you pick up and for what purpose. Do not open three or more Synchrony accounts at the same time. They are known for shutting people down completely if they get spooked. Citi is one of the biggest issuers in the world as well, and are very very particular about identity verification. Do not close a door for yourself by applying to a ton of Citi store cards all at once.
5. Stay away from Fingerhut. Just dont. The only purpose for Fingerhut would be getting in with Fresh Start if you have no other installment loans at all, even then its just a 5-8 month sales contract that results in a new revolving account once you graduate.
6. Do not rely on Vantagescore anything for your credit health. Karma, Sesame, Nerdwallet, etc, they all flat out state they are for profit and are paid advertising revenue for recommening credit products. A lot of their "pre-qualified" offers are hogwash and terrible for your credit profile anyway. Even if you cant afford MyFico, get your Fico scores from Discover Scorecard (Experian), any Synchrony account (Transunion), and any Citi account (Equifax) - if you can (there are numerous other sources as well, take a look around and find them). VS3.0 is unreliable and misleading. My Equifax Fico 8 is 723 as of the time of this post. Guess what Credit Karma says my Equifax is? 616. Really?
7. Do not assume one persons success with something will mean you will succeed as well. The guy in the post before you might have been approved for Amex something or other with a 680 score blahblah, but that doesnt mean you would be. You might have a derog, or high inqs or Utilization he did not have. So know your situation before you apply for anything.
8. Do not, and this is probably the strongest do not I can emphasize, as it relates to number seven: Do not use the Credit Pulls Database for anything relating to your credit. Not only does number seven completely apply here, but it is not an official source of anything, is open source meaning someone could *gasp* be lying about their datapoint, and is full of misleading information (someone reports a pull from Equifax, but neglects to report that same entry also pulled EX)
9. Do not become impatient. This was my biggest achilles heel this year and led to the Great August Spree of Doom that completely messed up my plans for 2018. Garden Early and Garden Often, because if you keep applying and opening new things, eventually every single issuer is going to tell you to get lost. That is effectively where I am right now (in a year or so, I might stick a toe in the water again) But a very polite, stern, and frank Chase CSR made it very clear to me where I stood with any lender worth their salt when viewing my report. I looked extremely (his words) desperate.
10. Last but not least - Do not spend money you do not have right here right now. Sounds counter intuitive to credit, right? The thing is, youre rebuilding right now, you DONT have good credit. Therefore, only spend what you can pay off within 30 days. I mighta sorta goofed on Christmas spending this year, knowing full well its going to hit me in the rear come January's 3B due to my Utilization spiking, but I know I can fix it quickly, I stopped myself when I realized I was about to pass a point of where I couldnt pay off all my CC debt within 90 days if I needed to. You may not have that kind of income or savings, so be even more careful if you have to be!
I have had some big successes too, these are just the outstanding errors I would redo if I could. Hope this helps. =D
