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Comment by bradlys | Hacker News Reader

I was denied a secured credit card when I had a job paying $65k/yr. A secured credit card. How can you be denied for that? I don’t know but I managed. I had 0 credit history btw. Literally none.

When I finally got to $110k/yr I was able to get a $300 credit limit card.

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It's crazy how everyone has a different experience. I was given a $300 non-secured credit card while I was in college with no income. They automatically raised it to 12.5k over time without even asking me.

Which is why this shadow credit score shit is even more absolutely appalling.

Did you co-sign student loans with your parents? That's one of the easiest ways to build credit.

I did not. I think it may have been because it was a credit union associated with the college I was going to.

When I was first building my credit I did a bunch of research and found a credit union that would let me take out a 12 month secured loan and then used the proceeds from the loan to open a secured credit card. I immediately paid off all but one payment on the loan pushing out my due date to the 12th month and scheduled an autopay for the final payment (this way I only had to pay a trivial amount of interest). This particular credit union has their secured cards "graduate" to unsecured cards after 1 year of on-time payments. Right before the card "graduated" I dumped all the savings I had into the card. They returned my security when the card "graduated" and I was left with a 12 month on time installment history and a significant unsecured credit line. After that I didn't have any problems getting approved for other cards with limits sometimes even eclipsing my annual income. I figured all this out just by reading web forums.

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