The Credit Offers Continue

In my mail this past month, a total of 5 credit offers, 2 for a credit card and 3 for car loans. I have dutifully shredded all of them. The interest rates and terms were insane. Once I get the guts to pull my FICO score (I swear I'll do it soon, I have to get a "baseline" post BK and I will share with all of you), I'll go back and research secured credit cards.

What I still find insane is that banks and lending instutions, even in this economy are offerieng credit to people with bad credit histories. Lets face it, I'm bankrupt, discharged, but bankrupt and I still get credit offers on a weekly basis. These folks knew about the discharge before I did, someone must troll the court records on a daily basis to gather names and addresses.

My grand plan is to put my cell phone on auto debit to the secured card. I don't use my cell phone all that much (I don't have great reception in my area so I don't use my phone all that much).

Everyone,well the financial bloggers and writers that I think have some serious street cred, all say the best way to inprove your FICO post BK is with a credit card that reports to the credit bureaus and an installment loan. I got the installment loan with the car, now to get a credit card.

I did check with my credit union and they don't offer a secured credit card. I would have liked to use them as I want to use them to refinance my car loan later this year. I'm doing my research and almost all the secured credit cards have a "set up fee", yearly fee, kinda high interest rates, fees for increasing your credit limit, etc.

Since I'm doing OK on a cash only basis (and had been on a cash only basis for a couple years prior to the BK, I'm not looking to use a credit card to get back into the situation I was in. Which was way over my head and out of control when life interviened and my rates sky rocketed. I would like to see my FICO score make some upward progress.