So, I’ve just finished paying off all of my credit cards at once (I know, I know, I should have made regular payments, but the interest rates were so high and I owed so much money that it wouldn’t have been worth it, especially if I had missed a payment or something), so now I’m looking for a credit card for college students with awful credit, which means that I’m probably looking at a card with an annual fee, probably (although I hate hate hate that idea, my credit score’s in the shitter).
I’ve stumbled upon a couple of sites that offer comparisons, but I’m nervous about typing my info into a site unless I know it’s for real. Suggestions, oh Dopers!
Perhaps look into a secured credit card, to rebuild your credit. The idea is, you send the bank money, and they send you a credit card that works exactly like a normal one except that the limit is the same as the amount you send them. You’ll get a better deal becuase the bank always knows that even if you decide not to pay, they’ve already got the money.
Do you know your actual Fico score? You can use ScoreMatch to get a listing of appropriate cards. You don’t want to just indescrimiately apply because every application means a pull on your credit report which dings your credit score a few points.
If you don’t know your FICOs, I highly recommend springing for them. At MyFICO, there’s a fee but you can get all three credit reports and genuine ratings (other sites that give you a rating are actually giving you estimates, not your real score). Invaluable for finidng out where you stand and what is reporting as negative. If you decide to spring for your scores, get a discout code at the credit boards.
The thing with student cards is that they’re typically designed for people without much of a credit history since students starting out usually don’t have one yet. Since you already have a not great one, you may not qualify. On ScoreMatch, there are some 500 FICO cards with decent approval rates, you might try them.
Be very careful, most of the lower credit score credit cards have really crappy interest rates. Make your regular payments even if you don’t think it’s “worth it”. It’s the late payments that are really sucking down your credit score. If you had just carried the balances but made the minimum payments on time, your scores would be much, much higher.
About ten years ago, I had really, really crappy credit. Don’t know what it was but I wasn’t approved for anything. Got my cards paid off and then didnt’ have a credit card for a long time. Eventually, I applied for a card from a random mailer I got and was approved at a horrible interest rate. Used that card only for emergencies and was fnantical about not missing payments on anything. After keeping my nose clean for years, I’m now in the top 10% of Americans and qualify for all the best rates so you can definitely climb back up.
Thanks for the suggestions. When I said that it wouldn’t have been “worth it” to make regular payments on them, let me explain. Once upon a time, I realized that I was in credit card debt pretty deep, and I got my parents to cosign on a student loan to pay them off. Make payments!, everyone says. It’s better for your credit. I know that, but thanks guys!
So I try to do that, but end up miscalculating how much money to keep back, and so didn’t keep enough back to pay them all down to zero. When I say “them all,” I mean the like 6 credit cards I had at the time.
Months go by with nothing but minimum payments (if that), and things start to accumulate again. I have this complex where I see an available credit limit and think of it as money in my pocket. (This stopped when I stopped carrying my cards around with me). So I take out another student loan to pay the credit cards off, and say “You know what? I know this would work out better in the long run, but I don’t trust myself to get payments made on 6 (is it 8 now?) credit cards on top of paying utilities and rent and everything.”
So I just paid everything off at once, and settled on the three big ones, thus leaving me without a Major Credit Card ™. I have yet to close my Old Navy/Kohl’s cards, but it’s a 30-45 minute drive to the nearest either, and I’d like to have something else to build up credit than a store card. 40 pairs of $29.95 jeans can only take me so far in life.
Missed edit window - on a side note, none of the cards that I put settlements through for have posted on my credit report. Does that sometimes take a couple of months? The transactions have gone through my bank account. (as of about a month, maybe 3 weeks ago)
Did you already close your old cards or were they canceled on you? It’s better to keep old cards open, if possible, because length of credit history is a variable in calculating your score. I wouldn’t close your store cards for just that reason, just don’t use them.
If you settled with credit card companies and didn’t pay off your full debt, you may be limited to a secured credit card. Companies take into account not just FICO scores but the types of negatives on your report. If your negatives are from late payments and settlements, most credit card companies probably won’t want to issue a card to someone who’s already demonstrated they won’t pay it back.
Go to the Credit Boards site and read up on credit. The threads are kinda hard to follow sometimes but there’s a lot of really, really good information. A lot of people in your situation start off with store cards to get some initial credit (There’s a jewelry store in particular a lot of credit board people get because it’s been verified that they do report positive tradelines to the credit agencies) and then are able to move to unsecured cards as there credit score climbs. But it won’t be instintaneous, it took you a while to get into this mess, it may take you a while to get out.
The two big ones (that I settled) were closed on me, and the store cards are still open, so I’ve got two big negative hits right there. The website tells me, though, that besides late payments, I also have short average account open time, short longest account open, and high balance/limit ratio (which I assume will go away once those payments hit my report). It seems like other than trying to build credit, time is going to make some of that go away.
Anyway, thanks for your help, everyone. I’m going to give things a couple of weeks to straighten out with my report, and then look again and see how things change.