Alternative methods to get credit

Well, you essentially have three options under your circumstances:

1) Get a few secured cards. Your scores will not raise much if any because the accounts will be brand new,

2) Have a friend or relative add you as an Authorized User to existing credit card accounts which have never been late, have at least one-year of history, and a low balance. Your scores will be around a 730 mid-FICO with two of these and if you remove the derogatory account. You should be able to get started on your own at that point;

or,

3) "If" paragraph two isn't an option and/or you can't or don't want to wait on paragraph one, companies sell authorized user additions. We at Apex Credit Services do. Be very careful who you deal with if you go this route.

 

Apex I want to thank you for that last sentence,It makes it very clear that you have this service,as while as others.And for people to do their home work.If people don't understand that then they are left with the option of waiting until they get there own history in 10 years.So if i could speed up the process,I'd pony up the dough.

 

learn to live with out credit,if you want something save up until you have enough money to make the purchase.oh im sorry that means you would have to wait a little while and couldnt have it now.

 

You know, as a kid I always wanted a "credit card". Got one when I was registering for my first year of college ("wow, look at this, they're giving away credit cards...and a free water bottle too!"). Shortly after I got that, offers were just rolling into my mailbox. I picked and chose and took a nice looking Citi with a Yankees logo to supplement the Discover I'd been given.

Screwed up my credit about as quickly as you can so I went back to the advice that my mom had given me growing up, and that I read in "The Wealthy Barber" by David Chilton and that you just gave here: Buy Cash! I bought all my cars cash for years until I got into the car business where I never had to buy a car...I got to drive around in fancy Lexii and Mercedes' as my demos.

Unfortunately when you get old like I did two years (35) and you want to buy a house or condo, the banks kind of frown on this type of personal responsibility. LOL. I found this out in 2007 when my girlfriend and I started thinking about buying a home. We started by pulling our credit. I figured I'd be stellar since I had paid student loans and I had rectified the situation with the cards I had as a kid by paying off the CAs (don't let anyone say ALEX never pays his bills). To my surprise, I was a ghost (as we say in dismay when pulling the bureau of a potential car buyer) on one report: no information. The other two did show the student loans but, damn them, they seemed to care more about a few late pays over the years than the 90% I did on time. To my dismay there was no record of me having paid off the CAs (hahah, if I had only known then what I know now I would have heaved a sigh of relief).

So my responsible non-use of credit except for a student loan which I paid in full (hey, everyone is late a couple of times, right?) had gotten me...a sub-500 score.

Here I was psyched up since I'd been making 6 figures for 10 years straight and I had followed all the other advice in The Wealthy Barber about saving so I had a shitload of money and I'd read every Robert Kiyosaki book so I was ready to start spending it wisely on real estate but...no one ever told me, "utilize 15% of your credit, keep growing it, diversify credit types, get loans just to pay them off early even if you pay 4 months of interest, know the difference between good and bad credit..." and all those other things I've learned on CreditNet.com in a year and a half.

So we took a step back...I had been ready to blow my life savings on buying a condo for cash (!) which would have saved me lots of interest but put a $300k hole in my life savings. (No, it was not a condo in the Trump Towers. For any non-NYers who look at the luxury homes and estates in their corner of America with $250k price tags, consider yourself lucky. That's what it costs to get a decent condo here in Brooklyn. Decent houses here start at about $750k). But we wanted to do it right. I got a secured card and started building credit. More on my situation in a minute...

My girlfriend was the opposite. She only made 50k per year but had always used her cards and paid on time (except for a few slips here and there). She had 20k of limit on cards and was about 10k in debt. She also had a misreported charge off and a legit collection. Her score was 650ish! She wanted to pay down her debt immediately using some of her savings but I had just found CreditNet. I told her, "let me work on the chargeoff and collection, then if I get them off, take an installment loan on the cards and pay them all off. 1) The interest will be lower than the cards rates. 2) Paying down the CCs will help your score. 3) Eventually paying off the loan will help your score too."

So (to my surprise) I was able to get most of the derog off of her bureaus with lots of help here. Then she got the loan and paid down her CCs. Now she had only her loan to worry about so she wanted to cut up her cards. I said, "No, No, No! Keep using the cards but live within your means. Since you have 20k of credit, try to use no more than 3k (15%) per month. And make sure that you can pay in full at month's end. If you hit that financial limit, stop buying. No, don't use cash. Just don't buy whatever you were gonna' buy until next month. But before you do anything in a given month, pay that loan note."

She doesn't really spend 3k a month so she was well below 15% usage of her cards--to the point where, when I took her out to dinner I would put it on her card and give her cash just to show usage. She was able to pay down the loan in about a year. Now she's a 760 score has a 36 month installment loan of 10k paid in 12 months and she's essentially debt free (she uses but pays on time). Once we get the house I might advise her to stay away from the using the credit cards too much since there's no higher "credit goal" but I think THIS is what our parents should have taught us about responsible credit use. Not to avoid credit--but to use it wisely, accrue it and live within our means so strictly, that our banks keep raising our limits and every other bank bombards us with offers.

As for me...well, I knew there a reason I paid for those dinners on her cards and gave her cash. I was added as an authorized used on her Citicard once when she asked me to get on the phone with them and smooth out a late pay. I never got a card with my name and didn't really know what that meant despite the reading I did here in 2007 and 2008. Last week we both pulled our report again when something derog accidentally hit her report (it may be ID theft at this point, we're still figuring it out). But anyway, there was my report with my semi-cleaned up student loan. The secured card I had been using with good history for 18 months or so and...her citi card. I had no idea that it would hit my report as an AU. I had added a second card with stellar credit. On the advice of others here I just added myself to her Discover and Chase and HSBC. So now I have my own 20k in unsecured debt with long histories, decent usage and essentially 0 balances. I will probably cancel the secured card and put all that dough back into my mattress. I plan to buy her the new Cadillac SRX she's been drooling over, under my name and credit, as soon as those other card histories hit my bureaus (or when the new model hits the store, whichever comes first). Normally my creditworthiness might not be enough but since I manage a dealership, my F&I guy has a lot of pull with the banks. I'll pay off the car by November or so and then we'll move on to our dream home. Two years later but hundreds of credit score points higher.

Anyway, moral: Be careful about not using credit. I didn't and it cost me two years of home ownership.

 

It takes a good one to two years to build a 700 score from the secured card route. Sometimes longer.

What we do is simple. We just add you to an aged credit card. Within 90 days (usually, sooner) it reports on your reports and Fair Isaac scores it as yours. Instant history and avaliable credit.

Some people have an ethical objection to the process. However, it is legal and the ECOA precludes Fair Isaac from not scoring these accounts. In actuality, federal law keeps this process viable.

 

credit cost too much.i understand that some purchases are too big for some to pay cash for and with credit either you use it or lose it.the banks want you to maintain balances and pay payments so that they can make there money and if you don,t your score goes down.so you are always paying for your credit and you play the game or you are punished.you cant use credit like a tool that when you are done with it you put it up until you need it again and re use it. so many people here are so interested in learning how to repair there credit as fast as they can just so they can go out and do it all over again.i will pay cash for what i need from now on ,and no im not rich but not being in bondage to some bank is worth alot to me.

 

Credit IS a tool. The best way is to get a rewards card. Yes, you'll pay an annual fee, but depending on the rewards, you will get at least part of it back.

When you want to buy something, have the cash. But use the card. Keep the money in your bank account until the bill comes, then pay in full. You'll have the cash to pay, because you only bought what you could afford. And you'll build credit and get the rewards. And, you've earned a little extra interest by leaving the cash in the bank for another month or so.

 

You probably won't get a rewards card without some history.

Your best bet is to contact Apex and get some more information from him.

Does your mother have good credit? If so, she could add you to one of her cards and accomplish the same thing. She wouldn't even have to give you the card--she could have it sent to her and keep it.

 

Yes, but it won't help you much if it's a new account. You need something with at least several years of history and low utilization, and no derogatories.

 

Apex, I know we have discussed this to some extent before and I know you have said that it can't be done for corporations but I just can't help but think that it might be done if one goes about it correctly.

What if I were to buy a corporation with a long history of good credit (which I can do) and then piggyback other new corporations the same way you do for natural persons? Just seems to me that ought to be viable.

It does cost a rather pretty penny to buy such a corporation but it is possible to buy them. They are corporations which have been set up for the sole purpose of establishing their corporate credit lines and aging them well then selling them at a huge profit. Hundreds if not thousands of such corporations have been set up by different companies. Corporations can be bought which have a history of anywhere from 1 year (cheap) to as much as 20 years (very expensive). So what is your reasoning for saying it won't work?

As you said in another thread, I don't want to get into any pissing matches, I just want your thinking on the idea.

 

I just don't understand how one Company can add another company to it's accounts. Perhaps it is possible but, I simply don't get it.

 

But couldn't you contract to manage a company and add your credit accounts to their accounts?

 

Well, I don't know either but it just seems logical to me that if a person has excellent credit and credit cards and can let others piggyback as authorized users then it also seems logical to me that if a corporation has long standing credit and credit cards it should be able to do the same thing as a natural person can do. I don't have anything to back me up when I say that. All I have is my own instincts of what sounds logical to me. As you can figure out very quickly if you had my instincts or what sounds logical and a couple of bucks you could probably get a cup of coffee and maybe even a donut. (LOL)

 

I don't know either. What I do know is these companies purport to be able to do it but, when you ask them how you just get a bunch of drivel and flagged DnB and Experian reports.

If someone could offer a viable explanation, we would probably offer the service.

 

The charge depends on the history and the credit limit. Some base prices on listed on our home page. For a more detailed description call us or submit an online application.