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Secured card vs unsecured for credit building - my experiment results
I tried a secured card from Discover for 6 months then got an unsecured Capital One card for another 6 months. The secured card helped me jump 80 points from 520 to 600, while the unsecured only moved me 25 points from 600 to 625. Has anyone else seen a way bigger difference from secured cards early on?
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robert6591mo ago
Your numbers don't really prove much. The secured card had 80 points to work with because your score was already in the gutter. Going from 520 to 600 is easy because you fix the worst stuff first like late payments or maxed out cards. The unsecured card only had 25 points left to move because you were already in a better spot. Plus 6 months for each isn't a fair comparison. A secured card just gets your foot in the door and then you're stuck with a low limit until you graduate. An unsecured card lets you build faster once you're past the initial mess.
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jessej231mo ago
Whoa there, hold on. I gotta push back on this one pretty hard. That 80 point jump on the secured card wasn't just about "fixing the worst stuff" because the damage from late payments and maxed out cards doesn't just disappear overnight. You're telling me a 520 score is easy to fix, but those charge-offs and collections take years to age off and the secured card is literally the only option to show new on-time payments. And that unsecured card with only 25 points left to move? Well that's exactly my point... you had a cleaner file to start with so there wasn't as much room for improvement, but the card itself wasn't doing the heavy lifting. Your comparison ignores that the secured card had to fight an uphill battle against a trash record while the unsecured card got a head start with a decent score. Plus six months on a secured card with a $300 limit and six months on a $2,000 unsecured card isn't fair to the secured card either.
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