New on here

[Anonymous]

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@jamie123 wrote:

Welcome to the forum!

You have done a great job so far!

If you plan on buying a house in 3 to 4 years these are my suggestions on what you can do now to improve/maximize your scores:

1. Apply for 2 more really good quality credit cards right now. Credit cards are the foundation to really high and rock solid credit scores in the future. You want to end up with 5 to 8 credit cards that you can keep open for the rest of your life. Don't ever close a credit card unless you think long and hard about it. One of the credit scoring categories is age of accounts and good scores in this category can only be achieved with time. You are young, time is on your side!

2. Shift your day to day expenses to your credit cards but ALWAYS PAY THEM OFF IN FULL EACH MONTH! Do not carry balances month to month on credit cards!

3. WHEN APPLYING FOR NEW CREDIT you need to groom your scores to achieve the highest scores you are capable of getting. You do this by having one card report a small balance of less than 10% of its credit line and all your other cards report $0. You NEED to have one card report a small balance. If all your cards report $0 your scores will actually drop for not using credit. In my case my scores drop 18 points when all my cards report $0 versus one card reporting a small balance.

You have plenty of time between now and your mortgage application to work on building some really high and rock solid credit scores.

If you post which credit cards you currently have along with their credit lines I can suggest which new credit cards I think you should apply for. You want to get quality credit cards from the so called "prime" banks which are:

American Express

Bank of America

Chase

Citi Bank

Discover

Wells Fargo

Credit cards from these banks will grow with you for life. Long standing customers of these banks can expect credit lines in excess of $20K.

EDIT: Oops! I saw your credit cards listed in your siggy!

I would suggest you apply fot the following cards:

Bank of America - Cash Rewards Card

         You get cash back on your purchases

Discover - Discover IT Card

          You get cash back on your purchases

And perhaps if you shop on Amazon...

Amazon - The Amazon Store Card

          You get 5% cash back on all your purchases done on Amazon

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Thank you for your help also!  

[NRB525]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@NRB525 wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:
I don't have fico scores but my transunion credit karma is 778, equifax credit karma is 761 and credit.com Experian is 801 but my dad said my fico scores are probably much lower because I only made my minimum payments when I was deployed, even though I've paid off all my cards now. I never have been late on anything so I guess that part helps

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It doesn't matter to FICO scoring that you only made minimum payments, as long as you never missed a single payment. The CK scores are FAKO, not real FICO, but being that high, they imply your FICO scores are probably pretty good as well (within a range of 40-50 points , CK is THAT bad!)

If you decide to get your CR from MyFICO, you'll get a list of the different FICO scores with that.

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Thank you I ordered the 1 time on each for 19.95 each and it said my Fico 8 was 765 on TransUnion, 761 on Equifax and 793 on Experian as of today 6/27/2015

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Awesome! Yes, that's about what I figured they would be.

My advice? Do nothing with apping for a while. Shop around here for advice on what the various card options are, ask questions, take plenty of time to decide how the vast array of cards might meet your future goals, but do nothing until you are certain, because you can get any of the cards that anyone talks about as available. By choosing wisely, you will save time in the long run, minimize the Inquiries, and keep your score gradually growing.

Good luck!