How To Get Credit

The quickest way to get credit is to be added to someone existing account. If you have a family member that you trust and that trusts you they can easily add you to one of their credit card accounts. If they are going to add you to an account make sure that you will be an actual account holder not an authorized user. If all you are is an authorized user you will not gain anything from this method. If you become an account holder than you will automatically get all their credit history for this account on your report, both the good and bad.

Here are a few quick things to think about with this method of how to get credit. First if they do not make the payments it will reflect on your credit report. If they have missed payments in the past it will reflect on your report. If they stop paying they account can collect from you. So use this option to get credit cautiously.

The second easy way to get some credit is though your bank. I can almost guarantee you will get credit from this method. All you need to do is go to your bank with a few hundred dollars cash. Tell then that you are trying to establish credit and would like to get a personal loan. Tell them that you will put up a few hundred dollars in cash in return for them giving you a loan on the amount you give them as collateral. Banks will jump all over this because there is absolutely no risk to them.

A crucial point to this is that you must ask them if they will report the loan to the credit bureaus. If they are not going to report to the bureaus then don’t waste your time.

Once they have given you the loan. Make the payments over a 12 month period of time. Make sure you pay on time or early. Late payments will hurt your credit scores and derail your effort to get credit.

The third and most common way on how to get credit is to apply for charge cards from retailers, credit cards and gas cards. What ever you do, do not go and apply for multiple cards on the same day.  Apply for one and if you get denied apply for another one from a different creditor 2 weeks later. All creditors have different risk and underwriting guidelines so don’t get upset if you get declined a few times.

Once you have some established credit from using any of the above methods you will get buried in offers for credit. Kind of ironic but that is the way it works. Hopefully this guide will help you on your quest on how to get credit.