Cleaning Credit With Secured Credit Cards And Sub-prime Merchandise Cards

Cleaning credit with secured credit cards and sub-prime merchandise cards can be an alternative for the credit challenged. Basically, when your FICO score falls below certain levels, it becomes increasingly difficult to get credit of any kind at a reasonable cost. Obtaining a credit card, if even possible, begins to resemble pawn-shop and loan-shark interest rates. When you find yourself in a situation like this, there are steps you can take for credit clean up.

Using a secured credit card for a period of time can help with credit clean up, even if it is for a price. A secured credit card is basically what the name says, a credit card secured by a cash deposit with the card issuer. For instance, placing say $400 in a deposit account with a participating bank or lender would entitle you to $400 worth of credit, or some amount close to that. You may wonder why not just spend the cash instead of leaving money in the account, and instead of paying the monthly fees and expense. After all, some shopping for these cards will show that the fees can be quite high. Well, the answer is that this is a price to pay for cleaning credit as you go. By making your normal purchases with the secured card, and consistently paying it off at each statement, this information begins to be reported to your credit history. By doing this over a period of time, all those on time payments begin to drown out the negatives on your reports, and soon you will see an improvement in your credit score.

Using a secured card in this way takes a bit of discipline though, and you will find that you really do not want to miss a payment. And, your budget may force you to start small and grow slowly. If you can only afford a $200 deposit, start with that and manage it carefully. After all, the money management is what they want to see on your credit history. Another common sense tip with secured credit cards is not to use them for extra holiday or fun spending. At the end of the day they are meant to be and should be used as a credit cleaning tool.

Sub-prime merchandise cards can also be an alternative for the credit challenged. Cards of this type are attached to a line of credit that allows you to buy merchandise from a particular vendor. You will be required in most cases to put down a deposit on your purchased items, and the balance is financed on the card. Again there is a price for this, but it is the cost of credit clean up. The merchant captures your business along with sales they wouldn't normally have gotten in trade for the risk of extending credit to the credit challenged. That risk can have a cost to the merchant, and hence the extra cost. However, like the secured credit card, good payment histories are reflected directly to your credit history report.

Again, as with a secured credit card, sub-prime merchandise cards take a bit of thought and discipline. Both issuers have a very short tolerance for late or missed payments. So try to use the card for what you would normally spend, and place that amount aside immediately in your budget to be sure to make the payments. Both of the above cards show up as new lines of credit, and good payment histories from them are reflected on your report. In this way, both cards serve to bury or replace the bad information on your report over time. The extra costs of credit cleanup are far less than the costs of higher insurance premiums, missed job qualifications, and high risk loan interest rates.

Cleaning credit using the above methods are not the only tools you have available. And, they may or may not fit your situation. But, millions of people have and will continue to use both types of cards for credit cleanup and credit building efforts.