Originally posted by: mamax
hi, RossMAN,
I saw you mentioned something like achieving a good credit rating for your sister. I am interesting to know some. And how could I know if I could get 4.75% 5 year finance before I bought a car?
It's taken 2.5 years of careful planning to help my sister achieve almost perfect credit for her age/income bracket.
18 - Applied for a CitiBank student cc, she was declined. Since she had zero credit and I have too much credit we decided to apply for a
secured cc with $500 deposit and she was approved no problem.
19 - It's been 1 year, she has used her cc every month and always made her payments on time, not a single late payment. She hasn't applied for any other cc's, patience is important. Since it's been 1 year and she now has an established credit history we applied for a regular VISA cc, she was approved for a $1,000 VISA, so we closed her secured cc and got her $500 deposit back plus the interest it earned.
20 - Another year has passed, again she's been using her cc every month and made all of her payments on time, not a single late payment. She has not asked for any increases or applied for any other credit. It's now been 2 years since she got her first secured cc and now she has a regular $1000 VISA. It's time to take it to the next level, we applied with CitiBank again, this time she's approved for a $1000 VISA we're disappointed with the low credit limit but good credit takes time, it does NOT happen over night.
We also switched her VoiceStream cell phone from my name to her own name, she applied and was approved.
She bought a P4 1.8 system from Best Buy, applied for Best Buy financing and was approved for $1,200, charges the computer $899 to her Best Buy credit, 0% APR until January 2003.
21 - In a few weeks she'll be turning 21. The next step is to apply for 2 department store cc's and maybe a gas card.
In 9 months we'll ask for an increase on her VISA cc and her CitiBank VISA cc's.
By the time she is 22-23 she can easily be approved for a $25k new car loan with anywhere from 0-4.9% APR financing all by herself. This is a slow conservative cautious approach, she could be approved for a car loan by 21, maybe even 20 but she's very responsible (unlike her brother) and I want her to take things slowly. Her credit score blows mine away.