Ok I’ll be the first to admit in the past I mismanaged my credit had to employ a debt management company who screwed me over and I went back to paying on my own. Then I lost my job and had to settle with some of my cards for less than I owed.
Then after being unemployed a year I found a good job where I have been for the past three years. So I started trying to rebuild credit. I applied for a few cards some turned me down some accepted me. I started getting store and gas cards and all was good. I even got some MasterCard’s with reasonable limits
I applied for a Exxon/Mobile Mastercard and was accepted. You gave me a generous limit. More than other cards gave me but not what I felt was excessive.
A few months later you said you revied my credit reports and had to lower my limits although nothing changed on my reports I took the 300 dollar drop without a complaint.
I continuted to apply for cards from other lenders and was approved for a few more cards with higher limits than yours so since I had better rewards I stopped using you.
I have not gone over the limit on any cards or paid them late since and what happens? I get a letter from you again stating reasons that you have to lower my limit and now my limit is $300.00
What the holy fuck is this? $300.00 on a “prime” major card fuck no. My Orchard bank which is Sub-Prime has given me a higher limit.
If I didn’t want to take the hit for closing a card less than a year opening it I would close the account now. But the less contact I have you you Citi the better because I don’t want you to touch any of my other citi cards because I have a nice limit on one and I could transfer the balance to another card while I pay it down that would bring my utilization amount up too high.
This is your problem right here. Stop that. If you want to rebuild your credit, getting as many cards as you can lay your mitts on is NOT the way to do it. Get a few cards with decent rates, use them and pay them off every month or at least with the maximum monthly payment you can afford. Having a shaky credit history AND continuing to apply for new cards like they were the latest fad is a sure way to lower your credit score even farther.
This was a big mistake I just made after 6 years of trying to fix my credit rating. I finally got over 600 and now I’m back below 575. All I’ve done wrong is apply for too many cards.
I have a few card with decent rates. The cards I were apply for were business cards which required a PG because my business has been around for under 3 years and is a Sole Prop. I’ve stopped apply for the business cards because I have accounts now with any vendor I would use and one business Mastercard.
Technicaly the business applications should not count on my personal report but the iniquires do.
See thats just it. Citi used the same exact reasons (not related to inquiries) to lower my limit just like the did last time when there has been no change in the status of accounts.
They say my report showed a serious deliquency amd the time since it was too recent or unknown and it shows an amount owed on deliquent accounts. NONE OF THAT CHANGED since they first approved the card and lowered the limit the first time.
As a matter of face I’ve recieved unasked for credit line increases on all my other cards.
Exactly, if there are no annual fees (or other fees for that matter), don’t close it. Stick it in a sock drawer and forget about it. The longer the card is open, the more positive affect it will have on your score.
I’ve been playing with my credit for a while. There are some really quick bits of advice/tricks that I can throw out.
1)Hard inquiries stay on your report for two years. A couple seem to be OK, but many (usually more than 2 in six months) will ding your score. With that knowledge and knowing that I’m going to be wanting to buy a house in a couple years, I decided to go gung-ho and apply for a bunch of cards now. I’ll take a score hit, but in two years, the inquiries will be off and I’ll have some cards with history on 'em.
2)The Authorized User trick. I haven’t tried this, but I have a friend that just did and it worked. He had his mom add him as an authorized user. She has a Chase card and when she added him as an AU, all of her credit history for that card went on to his report. This bumped up his score 35 points.
3)There’s another trick floating out there that I haven’t tried (and can’t vouch for). The plan is to put $1000.00 into a passbook savings account. Then, go back to the bank and ask to take a loan out for $900 and to have them use the passbook savings account as collateral for the loan. (Make sure that the bank reports to the credit bureaus). The loan, for at least 12 months, will bump up the score and all you will be out is the interest on the loan.
4)And, by all means, stay away from Capital One.
Yes but now my overall utilization is affected becase 1000 in credit that was available to me but unused is gone
I’m already listed as an AU on a card with a larger limit so that goes towards keeping my overall utilization % down. Unfortunatly the card I’m an AU on is a recently opened card because my parents will open one card and close the one they were using.
My scores are 645-Trans Union 641-Experian and 590-Equifax. I don’t know why Equifax is so much lower than the other ones.
There’s that too. A bit of a double edged sword… as long as the Debt to Income ratio is good (and that seems to vary as to precisely what that could be), you should be fine. At the same time, if it’s what’s considered a toy card ($300.00 Credit limit or so), that shouldn’t affect the DTI ratio too much. If your household income is $75K and you’ve got $20K in credit lines available, you’re in a good neighborhood, but if you’ve got $150K in credit lines available, it’s going to look bad to lenders.
The best thing for the credit rating is to diversify. Not just revolving credit, but loans as well.
Yeah, my brother-in-law just ran into that “available credit” thing. He and my sister are getting pre-approved for a mortgage, and his car loan is damaging his credit rating. He had (I believe) a $25,000 car loan, he paid it off very quickly, but the $25,000 figure is still sitting on his credit rating as being credit available to him, and reducing his rating. I’m not sure how he will get that off his credit rating - it’s sort of like trying to prove a negative.