How To Establish Your Credit History
Your credit history is an important indicator on your credit worthiness. It will determine how easy you will be approved with a credit and the interest rate that you will be enjoying for the credit you are qualified for. Good credit history makes your life easy when you want to apply credit card or loan for any purpose. If you don’t have a credit history, you need to build one, but not many places are willing to give you credit if you have zero credit history, then how to even establish it?
There are a few things you can do to get the chances of building your first credit history:
1. Start with Bank Accounts
The first thing you should do is open a checking account and possibly a savings account as well at a local bank. Then, you should maintain these 2 accounts in good standing so that you show to the bank that you can manage your money. Although your bank account status is not part of your credit history, bank may use it as their reference to determine your credit risk when you apply your first credit.
2. Consider a Department Store Card
You probably have experience of being offer with department store card that will help you to save 10% on your purchases. Generally, it is not advisable to sign up with the card because its ongoing interest rate is very high although you enjoy the up-front discount.
Avoiding these cards is typically a good idea, but if you have no credit history and have trouble to establish your first credit, then sign up with a department store card is worth considering. However, before you sign up to apply the card, make sure you ask them whether they report to credit bureaus or not. If they not, then the card won’t do any good for you.