Gizmo asked: I am 24 years old and have lived on my own and within my means since I was 18. I work in Commercial Real Estate and do fairly well. I pay my rent and all my bills on time (or within 2 days of on time if I forget to send out mail) and have not ever been in debt. I am trying to build credit right now in order to buy my first home as I am sick of renting, earn enough/ have enough savings to do so and would like to take advantage of the low interest rates (yes I plan on staying there long enough to avoid losing money due to the market crash). I have 2 store credit cards that I rarely use and pay off as soon as i get the bill. For some reason, neither shows up in my credit history. My mortgage broker told me to get a card from my bank, where I have had 2 accounts with reasonable balances for the past 6 years and they denied me based on a lack of history. I don’t want some kind of high interest scam card that I constantly get pre-approved for. What can I do?
I do have a savings account and I did ask them about that… they said that their credit cards are totally seperate from the other parts of their banking, so no luck there.
I refuse to get a capital one card. Friends who work in the industry have strongly advised against it. Apparently they charge interest from the date of purchase and tack on a whole bunch of other bogus fees that they swear up and down in their commercials that they don’t. I don’t want any card that is peddled to college students, as those are the ones looking to get you into trouble.
I am paying my own rent etc. and we are building tradelines from that. It’s not that I can’t get a mortgage, it’s just going to be harder. The other problems are a.) I don’t have cable because I don’t watch TV, b.) I pay my utilities but they are in my landlord’s name, c.) I pay my car insurance, but it is in my parent’s name. The only bills I can show for myself are rent, cell phone and my gym membership. I do not have any loans and my parents do not use credit cards. They built their history through tradelines.
The cards are on my report, but show no history… They have no outstanding balances.
By the way I **** credit cards and car loans and the idea of financing anything but a house. This is why I don’t have them.
Thank you to everyone who responded. I just talked to my broker and it turns out that he has in fact had very little trouble making me look good on paper using tadelines (rent, phone, etc.) and once I make some mortgage payments my credit score should build quickly, so I will probably go that route. Still, this was all very valuable information that I will have to look into further and I am sure others on this site can benefit from greatly.
low interest credit card
