Hey everyone, thanks for stopping by. 3, almost 4 years ago now I fell into a really hard spot financially. I lost my job, my car, my relationship and of course my credit worthiness. I went without a job for quite sometime, not because I wanted to but the hand I was dealt didn’t allow me to unfortunately.
I took out a loan and of course wasn’t able to pay that back eventually. Let’s speed things up, currently I have a few collections.
An auto loan and an unsecured loan being the top bitters. I’ve never had a credit card and want to atleast start being able to build credit that way as I gather the money for the mentioned loans and try to “pay to delete” both when the funds are available.
I’ve tried discovers “pre-approval” process and got declined, next option would be capital one secured, I was pre approved although I’m afraid of going through with the application just to be declined when they run my credit and see the current debt.
The only companies I’ve seen that “help” or claim to “help” by giving the option of a stress free approval of a secured card would be for example “self” but after reading through threads I can clearly see that’s not the way to go.
Do you lovely people know any forgiving and safe companies to get a credit card with, even with a garbaged credit score?
I just want to utilize the 10% every month and build history.
Am I Screwed? Please share your knowledge great ones 🥲
byu/-_-YenMaster-_- inCreditCards
Posted by -_-YenMaster-_-
5 Comments
secured cards usually pretty forgiving
Capital One was my first CC approval about two years after losing my job and fucking up my credit. I’d pull the trigger; worst that can happen is you get declined. What’s 1 more hard pull at this point?
Screwed? No, but it won’t be easy and if you are in a situation where you need to borrow money for a large purchase it’s gonna cost you a lot more than anyone should ever pay
The best advice I can share, honestly, is that 7 years goes by fast. If you can wait it out w/o doing additional damage, that’s your best bet for making a full recovery
No matter how deep you’re in, you can always dig yourself out. But be warned, it might take a while. Like up to 5-10 years. With that being said, I think a secured card is probably the way to go at this point. I agree with Sad_Bathroom1448’s point of “What’s 1 more hard pull at this point?” Go ahead and pull the trigger on a secured card. If you get denied, your credit is still bad. Chances are one hard pull won’t make your chances at other cards much worse than they already are. If you’re approved, great! You’re on your way to a rebuild.
Slowly, as your score increases, you may be able to get a couple unsecured cards that you can use to keep your utilization low, build a good credit history, and possibly even earn some cash back. Just make sure not to carry a balance on any of the cards unless you absolutely cannot avoid it, as this will not only increase your utilization and therefore hurt your score, but will cost you real money as well.
Don’t spend money you don’t have, pay off all your cards on time and in full, and eventually you’ll be back on track. Best of luck to you!
Might be better to keep it simple and go with a secured option you’re already pre approved for, use it lightly, pay on time every month, and slowly clean up collections when you can, since rebuilding usually comes down to consistency over time rather than trying to find a shortcut.
When my credit was bad the only cards I could get were the secured Capital One and Credit One Bank