I have absolutely no credit. I have applied for credit from several places. But I cannot obtain credit because I have no credit. Now I am running the risk of having too many inquiries on my credit report. Again, I have absolutely no credit. So what are the BEST ways to go about building credit from ground zero? Please, can somebody help me? You can email me directly at hotchill2@yahoo.com. HELP!
Get a secured credit card, use it for 6 months, be on time with your payments, pay more than the minimum, carry a balance, don't pay your card off everytime you use it. Don't go over your limit, and use about 2/3 of your credit line max. After about 6 months, try a department store like Target. Do the same thing again. Stop applying for other cards until you have established a track record. Get a new card every 6 months or so, and if you have to have several secured cards just to get your score up, then do it. They don't have to be high limit cards, just use them responsibly. Try http://www.fcnb.com or try your local bank. You might try looking on this site under 'credit cards' under the secured list. Hope this helps. Good luck to you.
Good advice, except FCNB is out of business, and has discontinued their secured card service a while back. May want to try American Pacific Bank instead: http://www.apbank.com/021_scc.html $35 annual fee, 17.4% APR, supposed to report as unsecured.
Bank America...Wells Fargo and most other banks have secured cards...I'm told that Orhard is easy for a secured card too. This is how most get started.
