Question Best Egg Visa vs. Mercury Master Card: Which Is Better for Rebuilding?

[Barbisi]

I recently received offers from Best Egg (pre-selected,14.99-24.99% with no printed limit) and Mercury (pre-approved,27.24% with a $3000 limit listed). Has anyone dealt with either credit card and what is your advice? Should I try to open accounts with both, neither or one?
My score dipped back into the fair range after the discharge (no explanation given) according to the free Experian site I have access to.
I haven't applied for anything other than the rental house lease we were approved for in Washington state, and it appears no hard pull was done on our credit, as the numbers are the same. The only debt showing on Experian is the current mortgage, which should go away once the sale contract goes into force after our Colorado departure in May. Will my credit score improve when we no longer own this house?
Thanks all in advance!

[shipo]

I had offers from both, as well as a whole host of others, of the group I remember determining the Mercury card looked like the best. That said, interest rate was not a factor I considered as the rate was irrelevant to me given I had/have no intention of paying any interest, so it could be 50% and I still wouldn't care.

In the end I opted for a secured card as my first, and then the unsecured cards followed.

[justbroke]

I might try to establish with a local credit union. Get a secured card and fund it as best possible. Most of these will graduate to unsecured in 11 months. I'm at PenFed and NFCU.

[sophieanne]

Try Capital 1 ..they can be very generous after completing BK.

[flashoflight]

I suggest throwing any offers with annual fees into the trash and consider the no annual fee offers plus secured cards. The Mercury card sounds nice if it doesn't have an annual fee. Annual fees are really annoying because you won't want to continue paying it once you get better cards with no fees and canceling annual fee cards will drop the age of your open accounts. $3k is a large starting limit for a rebuild borrower so it's worth considering if there isn't an annual fee.

For secured, Navy is well known to graduate partially in 3 months and completely graduate in 6 months with just the minimum $200. Higher amounts may never graduate because they won't be willing to convert the larger deposit to the same sized unsecured limit.

[shipo]

I suggest throwing any offers with annual fees into the trash and consider the no annual fee offers plus secured cards. The Mercury card sounds nice if it doesn't have an annual fee. Annual fees are really annoying because you won't want to continue paying it once you get better cards with no fees and canceling annual fee cards will drop the age of your open accounts. $3k is a large starting limit for a rebuild borrower so it's worth considering if there isn't an annual fee.

For secured, Navy is well known to graduate partially in 3 months and completely graduate in 6 months with just the minimum $200. Higher amounts may never graduate because they won't be willing to convert the larger deposit to the same sized unsecured limit.

As far as I know there is no scoring metric for "Age of Open Accounts". When I was rebuilding I opened a CapOne secured card which I closed less than 7 weeks later as it didn't meet my needs; that was nearly two years ago and it is still counting to my account age averages.

[justbroke]

As far as I know there is no scoring metric for "Age of Open Accounts". When I was rebuilding I opened a CapOne secured card which I closed less than 7 weeks later as it didn't meet my needs; that was nearly two years ago and it is still counting to my account age averages.

It will count until it "may" fall off from 7 years since the date it closed. I always thought that closing a revolver would affect my AAoA (not AoOA), but they don't seem to do this until they actually fall off. They will affect your overall available credit and overall utilization.

Now, on the other hand, I found that closing a 2-year old installment does drop my score. Just happened. I paid off 2 installment loans early and my score dropped 10 points. I was not expecting that change.

FICO Credit scoring is witchcraft.

[Barbisi]

Thanks guys for the advice and experiences!
I recall shipo didn't like his Capital 1 secured card (due to low usage amounts) , so I don't think I'll go that route.
My husband is putting me on his secured CU card (needed for the final rental van to take us and the kitties to our new home in Washington) as an authorized user, so that may be enough for now.
I do think of the two, even with the higher rate, the Mercury may be the better option.
At this point in my life I really don't need active credit cards, so maybe waiting until we're in the rental rambler with our monthly rent being reported to all three bureaus and allowing more time for the BK13 discharge and closing to be recorded will permit better offers with even lower rates to land in our mail box. I can also open a secured card solely in my name at a Washington credit bureau once I establish local residency.
UPDATE : Since my original post, we received the final trustee accounting form stating we paid just under 40k over the 5 years of our BK13!
So much hellish stress for so little money! Believe me, if we could have paid off the entire 100K+ due, we would have done so gladly, because what we "saved" was never worth all the immense anxiety we had to go through.

[shipo]

Congratulations Barbisi and Zombie13! You are correct, at the time I got my CapOne secured credit card, the max limit you could secure was $1,000; simply not workable for me. I closed it after 7 weeks and opened my secured TDCash card with a $5,000 limit (which has both graduated to unsecured, but also has had the limit bumped up to $8,500). This isn't to throw stones at CapOne, I have been perfectly happy with the unsecured Quicksilver card I got from them about 6 months after closing the secured card.

[Carmella]

Is the benefit of a secured car no annual fee? I guess we will be looking into rebuilding credit fairly soon. We keep getting offers in the mail and I have been shredding them not really reading the terms. I do not believe any were secured, but I saw "no annual fee" on some of them.

I am with shipo not that concerned with the interest since I plan to have them paid in full. I don't really want to credit cards at all and will probably put streaming services or gasoline on the credit card and pay it off monthly. It will be nice to have a credit card in case we get to travel! Now it will be an option.

[shipo]

Some secured credit cards do have an annual fee, in fact, after closing my secured CapOne card, which was no annual fee, I opted to open a secured TDCash card from TDBank, which does have a $29 annual fee (with a pro-rated refund when the card graduates). By the time the card graduated and got $14.50 of the annual fee refunded, almost exactly 6-months to the day from when it arrived in the mail, I had earned nearly $120 in rewards as well as a dollar or two of interest on my security deposit. Before opening the TDCash card I'd read a lot of negative stuff regarding annual fees, however, most of it was relative to permanent annual fees, not the temporary one charged by TDBank.

Relative to your location in Ohio, back when I was researching secured cards I stumbled across the offering from Fifth Third Bank, which has a $24 annual fee; had I lived in your neck of the woods, I would probably have opted for it instead of the TD card; same kind of horse, different fur.

[flashoflight]

Congratulations Barbisi and Zombie13! You are correct, at the time I got my CapOne secured credit card, the max limit you could secure was $1,000; simply not workable for me. I closed it after 7 weeks and opened my secured TDCash card with a $5,000 limit (which has both graduated to unsecured, but also has had the limit bumped up to $8,500). This isn't to throw stones at CapOne, I have been perfectly happy with the unsecured Quicksilver card I got from them about 6 months after closing the secured card.

First Tech Federal Credit Union has a secured card that goes up to $25k. However, it will NEVER graduate AFAIK. It's no annual fee and it's one of the two unicorns I'm aware of that has rental car coverage. The other unicorn with rental car coverage is Navy Fed's secured card. Navy will graduate up to $2k. Maybe that could have worked early in your rebuild.

[flashoflight]

FICO Credit scoring is witchcraft.

Even worse is that lenders are free to ignore FICO and reference their own witchcraft internal scoring models like Navy Federal and the FinTechs. They might count other factors like education, bank balances, size of deposits, data from your Plaid connection, etc.

[Zombie13]

shipo : Thanks!
justbroke : I just use the Magic 8-Ball. Spot on every time!
Carmella - there is no annual fee with the secured credit card we got with the local credit union. We just said, we would like to put 5K on a secured card, and they said, ok.

[Ekop785]

I was approved for Mercury a few months after my discharge and have had no problems with them.