To all those who may know.. is it true that having a retail card in the mix helps the credit score? One of my negative reason codes on my transunion report is my lack of any retail cards. Can anyone confirm if this is true or not?
They say that one retail card helps, but more than one doesn't help at all. Of course, it may actually hurt your score until it's aged a little bit. I always advise people to get retail cards early, before their score gets high enough for really good credit. Then a couple of aged retail cards can help stabilize even a high score. (That would be because of their effect on average age of accounts, not on credit mix.)
Yeah, actually, the last thing I want right now is another credit card. As a matter of fact, I'm checking to see which one of my 5 cards I can eliminate. So I don't plan on getting more than 1 retail card. I'll only get the retail card if I know for sure it'd help my credit
It used to be widely repeated on this board that the formula for maximizing FICO scores was four bank cards and one retail card (plus an installment loan, a mortgage, etc.) I think that one retail card would help overall, but not until it was an established account. I think it would hurt a little bit in the short run, and help a little bit more in the long run.
