Rebuilding Credit With A Secured Credit Card
Poor credit scores are becoming the norm these days. Rebuilding credit needs to become more of a priority for people. Unfortunately today, there are many people who have a less-than-perfect credit score from their credit reporting agencies. As a result, these folks will find it very difficult to borrow money, and they are often turned down when they submit a Visa credit card application. Restoring and rebuilding credit should be high on your list of things to accomplish.
Rebuilding Credit With A Secured Credit Card
Rebuilding credit can be quite challenging. If you have a poor FICO score, you are going to have a very difficult time trying to obtain a traditional credit card. You need to find an alternative way to show the credit reporting agencies that your credit worthiness. The best way to do this is by being able to borrow money and repay it in a timely manner. You can accomplish this more easily with a secured credit card.
What is a secured credit card? As the name implies, this is a credit card that is backed by some form of collateral. Typically, the collateral is cash that is placed in an account in advance. Thus, when you use your secured credit card to make purchases, the money that you placed into a collateral account will be used to pay off your credit card debt.
What Have You Done For Me Lately?
Your FICO score is impacted more by recent activities than it is by things that took place long ago. So it is a very good practice to pay off your debts in a timely manner. The more you pay off your debts in a timely manner, the better your credit score will be. So, if you have money on deposit with a secured Visa card lender, that cash will be used to pay for your goods and services. The credit reporting agencies will see that you will have done a reasonable job repaying your debts and will increase your FICO score. This will allow you to apply for a traditional credit card and be able to borrow money more easily. You can obtain secured credit cards from both MasterCard and Visa.
Recommended Secured Visa Credit Card
There are several lending institutions that have secured credit card offers. One such bank is OrchardBank. This particular lender fully understands the situation that many of their prospective borrowers are in. They have dealt with many people who have a poor credit score. In most cases, they are able to help people in these circumstances by offering secured credit cards to rebuild credit scores. You can submit an online credit card application to see if you can obtain an Orchard Bank credit card. If your application is accepted, you will then receive an Orchard Bank credit card.
Once you have an Orchard Bank credit card, you will need to fund the account with cash. Along with their online credit card application is an easy online money transfer process. You can use the Orchard Bank online payment method. This allows you to move money from your bank account to the OrchardBank collateral account very easily, Once this is done, you will then be ready to use your Orchard Bank Visa card immediately.
OrchardBank is not the only lender to offer secured credit card offers. There are several lenders who will offer this to you. However, the Orchard Bank credit card is the preferred secured Visa card, in our opinion, predominately because of their reasonable fee structure. OrchardBank offers a very reasonable interest rate of just 7.9%. Furthermore, they are willing to waive their annual fee for the first year that you have their secured Visa card. In subsequent years, they charge a $35 annual fee for the privilege of using a Orchard Bank credit card.
Rebuilding Credit
If all goes well for you, it is possible that after just one year, you may have done such a good job of rebuilding your credit score, that you might not need to use an Orchard Bank credit card, or any other bank’s secured Visa card, for that matter. You might have done such a good job of repairing your credit score, that you will be able to submit a Visa credit card application for a traditional credit card. Remember, the secured credit cards require that you put up collateral (cash) in advance of being able to make use of their credit card. A traditional credit card allows you to make purchases and obtain cash advances without the need for any collateral. Your good credit will act as your collateral. Once you have a good credit score, you will realize just how wonderful it is. You will be able to borrow money much more easily. This can really help in case of a financial emergency. Therefore, you really ought to do everything that you possibly can do to get a good credit score and then to stay in good standing with the credit reporting agencies. The best way to do that is to pay off your credit card debts in a timely manner, and show the credit reporting agencies that you are a good credit risk.
It is extremely important that you improve how the credit reporting agencies view you. How can you do this? You need to make changes to your spending and bill paying behavior. Make paying off your credit card debt your number one priority. Using one of the secured credit cards to rebuild credit history is a good way to help to repair that poor credit score. Repairing a credit rating will allow you to obtain traditional credit cards and other types of loans, including first and second home mortgages.