College Student Advice on Credit Journey 2.0

[Quaek]

I made a post last September about starting my credit journey. Hopefully I can get some advice and steps to take and continue improving. I messed up and let my two $1k CCs max out/over limit. I'm trying to get an autoloan soon...

AVG FICO; 690

Perfect payment history/no derogs/short credit age/have maxed out both of my two CCs. 

I have relationships with-

1. Navy Fed; opened a 12k Pledge loan with them, I paid it down to under 10%. Checking/Savings with a good amount of money. No credit cards.

2. PenFed; haven't done much, just have a savings account.

3. Chase; primary checking account. Havent applied for CC. 

4. Chime; I rarely use them, I have a credit builder builder that shows zero blance and credit limit of $1600.

5. DCU; Only use them for savings account. One credit card for $1k, held a max balance, just paid it off. It hasn't hit my reports yet. Haven't tried a CLI yet. 

6. AMEX; Hilton credit card (should I product change), $1k zero balance, reporting to my credit reports. Have no yet requested a CLI. 

7. CaptialOne AU; shows zero balance. Has not hit my reports yet. 

8. Student Loans 

When I paid off AMEX (it was max) and paid off the NAVY pledge loan, I got a 50 point jump. I'm guessing when my DCU account and the AU account updates to my credit reports I'd see a similar increase (hopefully). That'd be me at 5% utilization.

My question is, how do I proceed? I was thinking over requesting a 3x CLI from AMEX and DCU, after those hit reports, applying for a Navy Federal CC (if denied, I could still do a secured credit card). Then an auto loan through Navy. 

Any advice is greatly appreciated. I'm still new and would love some guidance from the experts. TY!

[SouthJamaica]

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@Quaek wrote:

I made a post last September about starting my credit journey. Hopefully I can get some advice and steps to take and continue improving. I messed up and let my two $1k CCs max out/over limit. I'm trying to get an autoloan soon...

AVG FICO; 690

Perfect payment history/no derogs/short credit age/have maxed out both of my two CCs. 

I have relationships with-

1. Navy Fed; opened a 12k Pledge loan with them, I paid it down to under 10%. Checking/Savings with a good amount of money. No credit cards.

2. PenFed; haven't done much, just have a savings account.

3. Chase; primary checking account. Havent applied for CC. 

4. Chime; I rarely use them, I have a credit builder builder that shows zero blance and credit limit of $1600.

5. DCU; Only use them for savings account. One credit card for $1k, held a max balance, just paid it off. It hasn't hit my reports yet. Haven't tried a CLI yet. 

6. AMEX; Hilton credit card (should I product change), $1k zero balance, reporting to my credit reports. Have no yet requested a CLI. 

7. CaptialOne AU; shows zero balance. Has not hit my reports yet. 

8. Student Loans 

When I paid off AMEX (it was max) and paid off the NAVY pledge loan, I got a 50 point jump. I'm guessing when my DCU account and the AU account updates to my credit reports I'd see a similar increase (hopefully). That'd be me at 5% utilization.

My question is, how do I proceed? I was thinking over requesting a 3x CLI from AMEX and DCU, after those hit reports, applying for a Navy Federal CC (if denied, I could still do a secured credit card). Then an auto loan through Navy. 

Any advice is greatly appreciated. I'm still new and would love some guidance from the experts. TY!

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I think your best bet would be to slow down. I don't think you should apply for anything new. I would only apply for a CLI from DCU if it's a soft pull, but I'm pretty sure it's a hard pull with them. You can apply for a CLI from Amex, since they are soft pull. But don't be surprised if you get turned down by Amex. The down side of having soft pull CLI's is that the data is usually stale. To be on the safe side you should wait 3 months from when you've paid off both of the overlimit problems.

[Kforce]

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@SouthJamaica wrote:

I think your best bet would be to slow down. I don't think you should apply for anything new. I would only apply for a CLI from DCU if it's a soft pull, but I'm pretty sure it's a hard pull with them. You can apply for a CLI from Amex, since they are soft pull. But don't be surprised if you get turned down by Amex. The down side of having soft pull CLI's is that the data is usually stale. To be on the safe side you should wait 3 months from when you've paid off both of the overlimit problems.

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^^^^ This

[CorpCrMgr1]

Your doing well. Like others have posted, take a break. Let your current CC grow.

[Quaek]

Thank you for the advice. AMEX is a soft pull, it seems DCU is a hard pull (but they look look quarterly at soft pull CLI). I'll wait and let those age until they hit the year mark. 

As far as slowing down, it's been 6 months since my two CC's were opened. What's a good timeframe to start applying for other products? Ty. 

[SouthJamaica]

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@Quaek wrote:

Thank you for the advice. AMEX is a soft pull, it seems DCU is a hard pull (but they look look quarterly at soft pull CLI). I'll wait and let those age until they hit the year mark. 

As far as slowing down, it's been 6 months since my two CC's were opened. What's a good timeframe to start applying for other products? Ty. 

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I would suggest waiting until 3 months after your paid off balances have reported.

[Thomas_Thumb]

I thought the OP was planning to get an auto loan. If so, the OP should not apply for any HP CLIs or new cards until after securing the auto loan.

The OP is likely to see a 15 to 20 point score boost if the youngest revolving account reaches 12 months age. Getting a new card would be a setback to AoYRA reaching 1 year. So, let AoYRA reach 12 months, get the car loan and then after another 90 apply for 1 or 2 additional cards the same day.

The AU account probably won't add value scorewise. It will not be included in utilization calculations in Fico 8 or later models. Hopefully the newbie AU account won't count against AoYRA.