Author: Holly Johnson / Source: Wise Bread
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Please visit our Advertiser Disclosure to view our partners, and for additional details.It may not be easy to get a credit card with bad credit, but the effort you put forth to do so will be worth it in the end. Good credit is the key to being able to buy a home or finance a car, after all. When your credit rises to the “very good” or “excellent” level (typically a FICO score of 740+), you’ll qualify for loans with the best interest rates and terms.
But how do you get a credit card with poor credit? It takes time and perseverance to get approved when you haven’t yet proven yourself, or if you’ve struggled with credit in the past, but it’s also hard to prove yourself when no one will give you a chance.
Still, you can get a credit card with bad credit if you’re willing to spend time fixing your credit first. Here are the most important steps you should take along the way.
Step 1: Find out how bad things really are
Your credit may be terrible, or you might just assume it is. Either way, you need to find out for sure. Gerri Detweiler, education director for Nav, a company that helps business owners build and monitor strong business credit for free, says step one is checking your credit score — but not just any credit score.
Specifically, Detweiler says you should strive to check your FICO 8 score — one of the many credit score types lenders use. Typically, this is the one card issuers check before approving people for a credit card, she says.
Seeing your FICO 8 score is “not crucial, but it’s helpful to see where you fall using this scoring system that card issuers actually use,” she says. Another option is checking a free credit score offered through your bank (if applicable) or signing up for a free account with a service like Credit Sesame or Credit Karma to see an estimate of your credit score there. (See also: I Checked My Credit Score in 11 Places — Here’s What I Learned)
Step 2: Consider other credit factors
In addition to your credit score, Detweiler says card issuers want to make sure you don’t have an open bankruptcy. “If you have an open tax lien, that could also be a disqualifier,” she says….
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