I owe my jump from a sub-500 credit score to a 771 credit score primarily to secured credit cards. A few years ago I couldn’t get credit to save my life. I had screwed up with the first cards I took out – I was an idiot and I ruined my credit. About two years after I screwed up my credit, I decided that I wanted to fix it.
I knew that in order to fix my credit, I needed to get some new credit lines. I immediately tried to sign up for a few credit cards like the ones I had before. I was denied for every single one of them. I found myself in the same catch-22 that a lot of people are in. They need credit to build credit, but can’t get credit because they don’t have any credit. It’s a mess but you can dig your way out of it, just like I did.
After some research I discovered that my only option was to take out a secured card, and work from there. That’s exactly what I did and it was a great decision. I now have a great credit score and also have more than $30,000 in available credit on my cards. It took a few years for me to be able to make it happen, but I’m sure glad that I did.
How Secured Credit Cards Help You To Build Or Rebuild Credit
When you don’t have good credit, banks know that you don’t have a reputation for paying your bills on time. This is what causes a bank to deny you for a loan or credit line. They want to lend money to individuals that have developed a solid reputation for making on time payments. Secured cards can help you to remedy this problem.
You give a small security deposit to a bank, and they issue you a card that’s backed by that deposit. This takes the risk away for them and helps you to get things rolling. When you make on time payments, the bank reports them to the credit bureaus. After a few months, your score will improve and banks will be able to see that you make your payments on time. It took about six months of making my payments on time for me to be able to get unsecured credit cards. After that point in time, I haven’t had any trouble at all getting credit lines or loans.
In the future I want to create a rating system that helps people to know which secured cards are the best. For now, I’m just going to tell you all which card I decided to use first. The one I chose was the Orchard Bank Secured Mastercard. It has some fees, as all cards of this type do, but in the long run, it was a good decision. I was even refunded my security deposit after a year or so.
Until I have my rating system done, this is the card I would recommend. Check back for updates, I’m working on it as we speak.
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One Response
jeff
June 13th, 2010 at 3:24 am
1Thank you so much for this information. It’s good to know there is still good people out there willing to help others. I messed up my credit too and was giving some advice not to bother with it, it would all disappear. Sure enough 10 years later, gone. So, like you said you need credit to build credit and now i have direction to get that credit. I always went to my bank or cusolitants for credit advice no help there. Not there fault i guess, just didn’t under stand them. Thirty minutes of your blogs i guess what there called, I get how to build and maintain credit! i would say a beginners level, but i get it and for this i thank you. I’m a mechanic so if need some car care or repair advice feel free to ask
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