Secured Credit Card while half way through payment plan

[dramos23]

Does anyone know if I can get a secured credit card with just a low balance so I can raise my credit score so by the time I've completed the payment plan my credit score is not through the floor. Not even even my Fico score is available(No Score) due to credit inactivity. It looks like as the C13 filing date gets older your credit must improve too cause my spouse applied for a post paid cellphone account and was approved. Correct me if I'm wrong but a secured credit card is not really like taking out credit since there is a colateral. Would appreciate any feedback.

[justbroke]

You'll have to look to whether your plan allows you to obtain any "credit" during the plan duration. You should be able to ask your Chapter 13 attorney whether obtaining a secured card requires permission from the trustee (and/or court). I did obtain a secured card during my Chapter 13, and it was for business-related travel.

Another secret can be leveraging an "authorized user" account. Just make sure that if you do obtain an AU account that the primary cardholder maintains the account, keeps low utilization, and has no other issues with the card provider. There are even cases where you may ask a family member or friend to be an AU, but tell them that you don't want a card or the card number. Again, just be sure that the card is well aged (2+ years... but older the better!) and that the primary cardholder is responsible with their bills.

It's true that a secured card is backed by an depository account with, usually, equal value. However, some of those cards graduate to fully unsecured cards and the deposits are generally returned to the customer.

[shipo]

dramos23, as justbroke says, the answer is, "It depends." Here in New Hampshire I could not get even so much as a $500 secured card without Trustee approval.

As for your credit scores rising over time while in a Chapter 13, in my case, they did rise to the point where I exited with a Vantage 3.0 score around 720 and a FICO 8 score around 650. All in all, I suppose restarting my credit journey with those scores wasn't an entirely bad thing.

FWIW, I am now almost 13 months post-discharge, I've done some things well, and some things exceedingly poorly in that time; the net result is my scores are more or less where they were last March (just a hair lower actually), I now have three unsecured "Cash Rewards" credit cards with a total credit limit of $14,000, however, I also have way too many "Hard Pulls" against the three credit bureaus to be able to do anything but sit on the credit I currently have and wait for those hard pulls to age out to 12-months. Fortunately I'm not planning on applying for a mortgage until next April at the earliest.