Apply Card Credit Online Secured, information?
i want to get a credit card.
as i have no credit history (never needed a credit card before) always
paid cash/cheque/debit card, what shall i do. I don't need a low
interest repayment rate (low apr) card since I will settle every bill
immediately. I need a credit card only to build up credit history.
SO.... what is the best option. Visa or Master Card? Is there any
tricks/traps I should be aware of. I know of some like annual fees
which i don't need. What other tricks & traps are out there that I
should avoid? Should I get my CC from a bank or some place else.
I don't want to be turned down for a CC as that would damage my credit
history. So i'm putting a decent size deposit in my bank account and
hoping they will give me my first credit card, even if it has a small
limit.
I have no idea precisely how or why this worked in my favor, or even if
it's a big deal, but here's my story. When I was in the same boat as
you, I looked around at credit cards at the Bank of America (my bank)
website. Since I hadn't had one before it seemed that a secured card
would be the order of the day, I wasn't that happy about the prospect of
having to establish a savings account that would match my credit limit,
a $500 deposit would secure a $500 credit line (they ask you to make a
separate deposit into an account that you don't have access to, so you'd
have to move that money of yours). If that was the cost, that would be
fine though. So, anyway, before just signing up for the secured card I
decided to apply first for the top shelf Visa Platinum Bank of America
card online and see what happened. As I expected, they rejected me for
the Visa Platinum, but at the same time offered me a (secured) Visa Gold
card and only asked for a $99 deposit on a $1000 credit line. I suppose
many factors came into play, but I'm not sure if I would have received
the same offer had I simply applied for the even money secured Visa
card. The application only made one appearance on my credit report,
worked out just fine for me. I'd see this as a big advantage to
applying for a card online rather than mailing off something in the
post. Oh, the secured Visa card had a $29 annual fee, not great, but
fair enough.
The Visa Gold card was not reported to the credit agencies as a secured
card, and from when I got it began helping my credit score. After a
year the $99 deposit was credited back to me with interest.
There's a lot of other options in establishing credit, the above worked
well for me.