How to Establish Credit Using a Credit Card

Having good credit is essential to being financially successful. Moreover, wise credit card use can significantly increase your creditworthiness, regardless of how long you’ve had credit or how recently you opened it.

Continue reading to find out how to use a credit card to establish credit quickly and to see which credit cards we think are best for those who are just starting out.

Using Credit Cards To Establish Credit

Although there are many various kinds of credit cards, they can be essentially divided into two groups: secured and unsecured credit cards.

While you can establish credit with either kind of credit card, their features and target audiences are different.

Credit Cards That Are Secured

When you open an account with a secured credit card, the issuing bank needs you to make a security deposit. Usually, the amount of your deposit determines your credit limit; however, you might be able to raise it with a bigger deposit.

Since it’s considerably simpler to get approved for one of these cards than for an unsecured one, they’re frequently used as starter cards and might be a decent choice for people with bad or limited credit histories.

A $100 to $300 initial deposit is typically required for the finest credit cards to establish credit, though occasionally as little as $50 may do. Benefits like cash-back on qualified purchases and the absence of annual or foreign transaction fees may also be included.

Credit Cards Without Security

The credit card limit of an unsecured credit card is determined by your income, credit score, credit history, and other variables; it is not secured by a deposit.

Unsecured credit cards provide significantly bigger spending limits and better rewards than most secured cards, but they often demand a fair to outstanding credit score, or between roughly 580 and 850 FICO.

The majority of the best credit cards available are unsecured and come with a host of benefits. For instance, travel credit cards reward you for spending money on hotels, rental cars, and airfare; balance transfer cards offer introductory rates as low as 0% APR; and many offer cash back or points for everyday expenses like groceries and gas.

But if you don’t have any credit history, it could be more difficult to obtain these cards. If so, you might want to start with a retail credit card or a student credit card, which are potentially easier to obtain based on your specific situation.

Credit Cards For Students

The purpose of student cards is to assist college or university students in establishing credit. Even if you don’t have a lot of credit history, these cards typically have better acceptance rates than regular credit cards. Sometimes proving that you’re enrolled at a university and having a steady job are sufficient.

While credit limits for student credit cards are frequently smaller, some of them might give access to rewards programs and other benefits like travel insurance. As a matter of fact, a number of the top student credit cards come with benefits like protection for your cell phone, yearly incentives, and cash back on eligible purchases—which include food, entertainment, and even streaming services.

Cards For Retail Stores

If you have a short credit history or a poor credit score, store credit cards might be more accessible to you than regular credit cards. For those who buy frequently, these cards may provide benefits including exclusive financing options, discounts on purchases, and access to promotions. Additionally, they might include rewards programs that let you accrue points for each purchase you make.

Store credit cards, on the other hand, may have higher interest rates and be less generally recognized outside of the particular store or its linked network, depending on the retailer that issues them.

Superstore credit cards from Sam’s Club, Costco, and Amazon are among the cards on our list of the best credit cards for groceries.

How To Use a Credit Card To Establish Credit

There are tried-and-true methods for raising your credit score quickly and successfully, regardless of whether you’re attempting to rebuild your credit history from scratch or fix bad credit. Even while they all take time, they are all essentially infallible and certain to produce favorable outcomes.

Payment history, credit age, credit card usage, total accounts, negative notes (like late payments or bankruptcies), and the volume of inquiries on your credit report are the six variables that affect your credit score.

The process of mending bad credit is essentially similar to that of creating and maintaining a strong credit history, however it may take longer to repair a poor credit history than to create credit from scratch.

Pay On Schedule

The best techniques to pay off credit card debt vary, but there is one thing that all schools of thought agree on: you should always pay your credit card payments on time each month.

If you want to establish good credit, paying your bills on time could be the most crucial thing you can do. Late payments have a negative effect on your credit score, result in additional costs, and can lead to an increase in interest rates or a reduction in your credit limit from the issuing bank.

To make sure you never forget a deadline, you may easily set up automatic payments. Since you won’t have to worry about remembering your due date, doing this may also help you feel less stressed about managing your funds. The majority of credit card issuers allow you to choose the frequency and size of your payments, which includes the minimum, a specific amount, or the entire credit card debt. This is an additional benefit.

Maintain Small Amounts

Your credit usage ratio is another element that affects your credit score. This shows you what proportion of your available credit you are utilizing. For example, if you have a $5,000 credit limit credit card and you have used $2,500 of that credit limit, your credit usage is 50%.

There is a chance that a higher utilization rate would lower your credit score. However, as it won’t indicate your credit consumption, having too low or no utilization will also not be advantageous.

For the best impact on your credit score, it’s generally advised to maintain your credit utilization ratio below 30%. Your credit score will benefit even more from lower ratios, like 10%.

Don’t Ask For Too Many Credit Queries

Your credit may also be impacted by applying for more credit cards or other credit-related items like loans. A lending institution obtains a copy of your credit report each time you apply for new credit, resulting in the appearance of an inquiry in your file. Your credit is momentarily dropped by a few points as a result.

Credit inquiries reveal to prospective lenders how frequently you apply for credit lines and stay on file for a year. It’s best to keep the number of queries to a minimum because opening too many accounts in a short amount of time can often be seen unfavorably by creditors.

Maintain Open Accounts

An other crucial element in establishing credit is credit age. The average length of time that all of your credit accounts have been open determines your credit age.

Even if you don’t use your accounts frequently, it’s a good idea to keep them open as creditors typically prefer credit profiles with more history. Closing them could have a variety of effects on your credit.

Closing an older credit card account, for example, may have an effect on your credit age as well as your total credit availability, which may lead to an increase in your credit utilization overall. Your credit score may be lowered by either of these things.

Examine Your Credit Record

Verify the correctness of your credit report. You have a legal right to obtain a free credit report from Experian, Equifax, and Transunion, the three main credit bureaus. Under the terms of the CARE act, which was passed during the pandemic, you can now get free weekly credit reports, whereas previously you could only receive a report every twelve months.

Verify that there are no mistakes in the information provided, such as inaccurate account information, payment history, or personal information. Negative things, like missing or late payments, that may have been recorded inaccurately or that have lingered longer than necessary, can also be searched for.

Get in touch with your banks, credit reporting agency, and credit card issuers as once if you see any inaccurate information. Any inaccuracy in your credit report can also be disputed online or in writing with the credit bureaus.

How To Look Up Your Credit Score

There are several ways to check your credit score, and it’s a rather simple process. Among them are:

Credit Monitoring Services: A number of businesses, including Credit Karma, Experian, Aura, and Credit Sesame, provide access to your credit score on a monthly basis for a price or for free. The greatest credit monitoring services usually also give you access to other features like trackers that notify you instantly of any changes in your credit score and security alerts.

Online Banking: Using their banking applications or websites, many banks provide free access to your credit score. All you need to do is check your account to see whether there is a section where your credit score is shown.

Credit Card Statements: Your credit score may also be updated on your monthly credit card statements by certain credit card providers.

A Credit Report: What is it?

A credit report is an in-depth account of your financial activities and credit history. A list of all your credit accounts, current queries, collections, and public record items like bankruptcies are included, along with a summary of your personal information like phone numbers, residences you have lived at, and known employers.

How is Credit Reporting Carried Out?

The main credit reporting bureaus, Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion, receive frequent reports on your credit utilization from financial organizations, including lenders and creditors. When you or a creditor requests a copy of your credit report, these organizations obtain, compile, and preserve a record of your credit history.

Utilizing a credit-scoring model such as FICO or VantageScore, the information gathered is also utilized to determine your score. The range of credit scores is 300 to 850.

Your credit score is gradually changed based on your creditworthiness, which is determined by the amount of debt you have and any red flags—like missing or late payments—that suggest you would have trouble making your loan installments.

Other strategies For Establishing Credit

There are other ways to quickly establish credit besides credit cards. Based on your particular scenario and circumstances, you may also want to think about the following:

Credit-building Loans

A credit-builder loan is a kind intended for borrowers with no or very little credit history. These loans resemble savings accounts in certain ways. Upon acceptance, the money is held in a savings account by the bank rather than being given to you in one large sum. After that, you make regular payments on the account until the bank receives the entire balance. In the meantime, the bank helps you establish credit by reporting your payments to credit bureaus. The money is returned to you by the bank at the conclusion of the period.

Acquire Authorization To Use

Adding yourself as an authorized user to someone else’s account is another method to establish credit. Someone close to you might add you as an authorized user on their credit card account, for example, if they have a good credit history. Together, you can establish credit in this way. But since it might affect both of your credit scores should you or the primary cardholder fall behind on payments, this is a serious decision that calls for a great deal of trust.

Reporting on Rent

Since rent payments are seen as a non-traditional credit reference, they are typically not recorded to credit bureaus. On the other hand, websites like RentTrack, Esusu, and Zergo are dedicated to informing credit bureaus about rent payments. You must sign up with and pay for your rentals using one of these payment processing firms in order for this to occur.

But keep in mind that while some credit scores—like the FICO 9 and 10 scores—consider past rent payments, they are not as popular. This implies that the advantage will vary depending on the credit score methodology that a specific creditor employs.