my brother is in college and pry has no established credit, I was just telling him about some things I have been doing but he pry does not have lucrative offerings. what would be a good introductory card for him to start his beast mode?

What site exactly? I have some negative items I need to take a look at that are old on my credit report.

are you talking about https://www.annualcreditreport.com ?

Yeah, then when you look at each report i think there is a link to dispute items. It was a while ago that I did it. They opened an investigation or whatever that took about a month.

Tomorrow is my last $360 bi weekly payment on a 4 year $32,000 loan at 4% financing.



I never missed a payment on that, and have paid off almost all my credit card debt.

I checked my credit score and its went from average to excellent.

In 12 months, I will be buying my first house.

Feels so ****ing good man.

He should do his free credit report and sign up for CreditKarma/CreditSesame. This should at least get him conscious about what the credit score is and allow him to track it over time, which is part of the "fun". You're right that he probably doesn't have lucrative offerings. I believe there is a Discover it card for students which has a $20 cashback after the first purchase in the first 3 months as well as 5% cashback on rotating categories. Though, it might be best to start with a secured card though to get his feet wet. I can't recommend any, but they are pretty simple in that you have to front the first $X and that is the credit line. It helps the person start with a solid credit history which only risks your own money.

And tbh, are you sure you want your college aged brother to go beast mode on credit? I think it'd probably be smarter to just setup some cheap monthly subscription to autopay on the card, then have the card autopay the balance each month. Some young people just can't handle it tbh, but it's tough to make a complete recommendation without knowing what sort of income level we are talking about.

If you had a big car loan that's been steadily paid off, does the final payment that takes it completely off the books give a big boost to your credit score? Or will your score have already gradually increased through the years of the loan as you owe less and less?

Or is it actually a bad thing to have it be finished?

gradually over time. They want to see a nice steady history of payments being made on time.

And its good for your credit because it shows you fully paid off a loan.

thats what my financial advisor told me anyways.

It shows 5 years of on time payments which is good for your age of accounts and your timeliness. Finishing the loan is good bc its an endpoint that shows you completed repaying, and it hangs out for at least 10 years on your report.

Your score gradually increases as your positive history and and age of accounts gets longer.

So, I did something pretty dumb the other day on a whim. I have pretty dismal credit (fico score of 620 and credit karma score of 658) but I have improved it a bit over the past year with my Barclays card that I have. I love my Barclays card and have never had a problem with them so far. I currently have a $1500 limit and don't over utilize it too much to keep my credit utilization down and so i don't over extend myself obviously so i don't have a big bill to pay off every month.

Been paying that on time for a while now and the other day I decided that I wanted to increase my available credit and credit card portfolio so I applied for some cards. I used to have a capital one secured card with a 600 dollar limit but wanted that deposit back so i closed that card. (probably not the best idea for a person trying to improve their credit rating but whatever, its done)

I looked around at some cards for fair/bad credit and applied for the discover IT card and was promptly denied. I thought ok, now what. So, I saw this other card by credit one bank for people with bad credit. (after reading a little about these cards and their apr and what not on creditcards.com) I applied for the credit one card and was approved. Didn't read reviews on it before applying...something I obviously should have done.

Now I've been reading reviews on this credit one card and I don't want anything to do with this company or credit card. Been reading reviews people saying the company is a scam and they nickel and dime you to death and charge you for almost everything you do with the card. I'm well aware it's a card for people with bad credit and with bad credit you're obviously going to pay out to the ass with interest and whatnot but this company just sounds awful. They even charge you if you pay your bill early or if you decide to use their expedited option to get your payment to go through in a day. Also been reading about fees if your credit line is increased. Also read that they will call you two weeks before your payment date and harass you about it. Seriously, wtf is that? I've never heard of such things. Oh yeh, customer service from India? No thanks. No offense to any people from India. Their logo even looks like the capital one logo.

seriously go look at it.... www.creditone.com Does that not look like the capital one logo?

I applied for the card I think on friday and on their page, they have this place where you can check the status of the application. All mine says is "approved" and that status will update to say the card has been mailed once it has, etc.

What's my best course of action? I realize I've agreed to their terms and all that but I don't want this card after all. I'm obviously not going to activate the card when it comes and I'm going to be calling customer service to say I don't want the card after all and they can just close it.

Discover...the other card I applied for, I was already hit with an inquiry on my credit which is fine, I expected that. I applied for this credit one card the same day, on friday, and still nothing has showed up on my credit. No hard inquiries yet or anything. I'm wondering if this credit one company will even bother to report this account that I plan on closing immediately.

I've tried looking on the website, but would I be responsible for the outrageous annual fee if I never open the card? i think it's something like 75 to 99 dollars initially. If I have to pay the annual fee, I'll just suck it up and pay it I guess. I just want nothing to do with this credit one company after reading these horror stories online about it. From now on, i'll do some better research that's for sure.

so citi upgraded my AAdvantage card to some elite tier card the other day out of the blue. holographic mastercard logo on it, card is solid black, says world elite on it. sorta baller i guess but im wondering if its gonna have some additional annual fee. not that it matters but i was planning on cancelling the card after the initial year unless they waived the annual fee when it rolled out

lmao that does look exactly like a capital one logo. SCAME. i guess its possible if you never activate the card and claim you dont receive it and try to cancel that way. most times you get charged the annual fee before the first billing statement on cards you open with the annual fee not waived in the first year. there's gotta be a few ways to get out of paying the annual fee. all-in-all if you dont find a way out of it and have to pay the annual fee, i'd at least keep the card for the year and cancel it before you get your 2nd annual fee

I suppose I'll just call them tomorrow and tell them not to send my the card and close the account if, in fact, it was actually ever opened. Doesn't seem like it has yet. I mean, my credit hasn't even been hit with an inquiry yet. From the website status of my application, the card hasn't been sent yet so hopefully I won't be charged for anything. I doubt they would even take the time to report this account either because from what I've seen it takes at least one bill for credit card companies to report them, right?

Just cancel the card, explain you applied for the wrong card by accident. No big deal, they'll cancel it, you won't be billed the annual fee or it will be reversed. Make sure of that on the phone, and continue to hang up and call back to try new agents to ensure you are ok.

Imjosh is it this one:

no its not that one. i guess it isnt really isnt solid black after all after re-examining it. got a bit too excited

My old one looked like this:

my new one looks like that except the logo is holographic like the card you showed and it says

WORLD ELITE above the credit card number

i got my first statement with my chase ink bold card on June 29, 2013. I wanna cancel it or convert it to the non-fee card before I get hit with the annual fee. What's the best way of doing this and when will I get charged the fee? At the start of my June billing period (i.e. end of this month)? Any evidence of people losing their bonus UR points after downgrading or cancelling a card?

If you are pre-approved for a credit card through the mail, do you still get the credit hit when you "apply" for it online? I assume so just wondering. The mail I got had a preapproved link I typed in online.

Just ordered the discover it card. mainly to keep up date with official FICO score but will also take advantage of the 5% stuff obviously. Probably going to get a Chase Freedom later in the year.

They havent called you? They obviously need to regulate that better.

call them and explain the situation but clearly state that you do NOT want your credit report pulled. if they say that they can't offer a credit increase without pulling your credit then you are SOL

Chase gives you 60 days after the annual fee hits to cancel/downgrade and have the fee refunded. Best way to find out when you will see the fee is to secure message them and ask.

Best way to downgrade is to call the number on the back of hte card and say you are thinking of cancelling due to the annual fee, are there any offers (sometimes they will give you a statement credit or 10k URs). If there aren't, mention you like the perks and want to keep the relationship with chase and you saw there is a similar card that is fee free, can you 'downgrade' to that card.

If you don't want to deal with that send a secure message asking for them to downgrade you to the INK Cash/Classic and see if that works.

Here are some retention offers from flyertalk:
Yes they still run your credit even if you're pre-approved. Pre-approved is a stupid term.

Just got my discover IT card. Really like the look of the card and the fact it doesn't have raised details like most other cards(just printed on the back).

Got a great credit limit for it too.

Also got my FICO credit score which is 734, so pretty pleased with that. Credit Sesame had it almost exactly right, credit karma was off, but maybe they use different basis or a different bureau?

Would have never gotten into credit cards prior to graduating grad school had it not been for this thread so thanks for that.

Credit Sesame uses Experian, whereas Credit Karma uses TransUnion.

Also, it seems lots of other credit companies are offering up free FICO scores and maybe it's becoming a bit of a standard? All three of my cards offer up free tracking of my credit score. I have a CapOne Platinum (my first card ever), Barclay Rewards, and Chase Freedom.

Yeah once one company starts to do that if customers see it as a value added benefit, the others will soon follow suit.

Yeah big thanks to JL for starting this. Would've lost a lot of free money if it wasn't for this thread.

Anyone have a citi card they like? Wife and I still have a citi forward card, and since they no longer do any 5% categories (only 1% on all purchases) we need to switch it up. This acct is the longest we have had, so I would like to keep it active.

Already have:

Costco TrueEarnings AMEX
Delta Gold Skymiles AMEX

So gas, travel, and restaurants are covered by these cards. Are any of these recommended for general purchases that don't really fall into the previously mentioned categories?

No balances so APR/balance transfer doesn't matter.

Depends what your goals are. The hilton reserve isn't bad for 2 free nights + gold status, the aa cards are cool for miles if that's interesting to you. The other cards are not that interesting.

What? Did Citi forward stop the 5% for Amazon movies and bookstores?