posted on June 12, 2000 02:22:33 PM new
Does anyone know how to go about getting a credit card when someone has done bankruptsy? I currently have a dept. store credit card that i have had since 1997 and just found out about it this feb., go figure. I keep paying the payments on time and they have given me two credit increases since then for maintaining a good account. I would like to get a visa or mastercard, but all I ever see are these stupid fees for membership, to annual fees. By the time you pay all their fees, you already have 200-300 invested in the darn thing. I have heard of people getting unsecured cc's from somewhere with a higher interest rate , but it helps re-establish their credit. I could care less if it was for the min. $300 line, I just need to start re-establishing my credit. But how can you when nobody wants to touch you? Can anyone help???
I have horrible credit. I can't do much about the bad credit, but I am trying to rebuild and get some good references by using an installment plan at a local furniture store. I was SHOCKED when they approved me for a $2000 line of credit, and I bought my sofa and loveseat with it. I've stretched the payments out so they are manageable and I KNOW I won't miss one, and at my request they are reporting the timely payments to the credit reporting agencies monthly (you might need to ask them to do this: some just report at the end of the agreement when you've paid in full).
Have you tried applying for other dept. store CC's, or gasoline cards?
Another thing I've done is take secured loans against savings with my bank. I didn't "need" the loan, i had the money in savings, it can be any amount you have in savings. I did it once for $700 and another time for $1200, and spread the payments out as long as i could possibly afford to have the money tied up, to generate more positive payment records. You pay monthly, for whatever time period you want to set it up for, and your savings is "frozen" til you pay. This was with my credit union so I don't know if banks will do this too, but really there is no risk to them so why not?? Once I borrowed against my mom's savings, another time it was my own (we use the same c.u.). I then set up the payments to be automatically drafted out of checking so they were ALWAYS on time. I did that twice and now have 2 more positive marks on my credit report.
A friend of mine built up her credit rating really quickly (but I must say it was never 'bad' to begin with, mostly just non-existent) by taking out small loans at local loan companies (i.e. loan sharks!) and putting the money aside, and paying them off right away. She did this repeatedly and now she has about $50,000 available in (combined) credit cards, and a good rating. Pretty good for a single ex-welfare mom, now student, with a minimum wage part time job!!!
The big challenge for me, still, is paying everything on time, just because I FORGET. Also, my husband has been out of work for a long time, which helps matters none. In the future, though, I am pretty sure that signing up for one of the bill-pay companies online will be a big help for me in this area.
I've recently found a very interesting site regarding cleaning up bad credit. It's a law firm. I can not vouch for it, I'm just checking it out myself, but if you want the URL email me at [email protected] and I'll be glad to share it.
