Best Secured Credit Cards

The Best Secured Credit Cards: What are your needs for these cards?

Nowadays, a credit card is a very essential tool in order to live a comfortable and a rewarding life. It may be a bit of an exaggeration, but there is some truth to it.

In today’s world, people seldom carry cash around. What they have, instead, is the debit card or the credit card. This is because of two critical reasons: one, it is dangerous to carry cash because it makes you an open target to criminals; and two, major companies and markets require the use of credit cards in order to engage in financial deals with them.

Just imagine if you do not have a credit card: you will not be able to book for a plane ticket or a train ticket. You will not even be able to reserve for a hotel if you go out of town. Alternatively, more importantly, you will not be able to buy goods from major markets. That being said, it then goes without saying that life will not be possible without a credit card, more or less.

However, if you are a person with a bad credit, getting a credit card is a very difficult thing. After all, no one wants to invest their money on someone who has a poor record of paying off bills and debts.

However, it is not to say that there are no credit cards available for bad credit persons. There are credit card companies that extend their service to people with poor credit history. All you have to do is to scour the internet to look for the best secured credit cards. The most ideal first step towards stabilizing your credit rating is through a secured credit card because this type of card generally eliminates the chances of overspending, thanks to its limitations.

Three Suggestions

Therefore, the following steps are some suggestions on how to find out the best secured credit cards:

Initially, you have to find out the fees that are charged by the credit card companies. The different fees that are being charged are processing fees, annual fees, and many others. Basically, the credit card companies vary in terms of the amount of fees that they charge. For practical reasons, you must choose those with relatively small fees.

Secondly, you must also find out the exact amount of secured deposit that you must have. The secured deposit is required by secured credit card companies because they use that amount as a security if ever you fail to do your part in paying your financial obligations to them.

Thirdly, you also need to know how they use the amount that you have deposited. For example, some banks charge your deposit every time you become delayed in payment. However, the best secured credit cards only charge if you fail to pay promptly at around 5-6 times, consecutively.

Thirdly, you must check whether the credit card company always submits credit reports to the major credit bureaus so that they will be able to track the progress made within a time period.

There are still other steps that you can do, but these three are the most critical steps needed in order to establish your foundations.

Other thoughts:

When selecting secured credit cards, the best is actually one that suits your needs. Why do you need the card? Are you just in need of a credit card for booking hotels, etc? Or are you looking to rebuild or repair you credit? If you need to fix your credit or establish credit, then the best secured credit cards are any that "report to all major credit bureaus". That's it!

After you have established that they do that, then find one that fits your budget. I look for low annual fees and no transactions fees. Unfortunately all the ones that are good at reporting to the major bureaus all charge a hefty annual fee. Nevertheless, I look at this as the cost of fixing my credit. Credit repair is not cheap, so if you look at this cost, as a temporary cost that is necessary to fix your credit, it will make more sense.

Personally, I recommend getting at least two and no more than three if this is your goal. Then on top of that, you will need to keep the balance on the card at about "zero". You can use the card, but you must pay off the balance in full every month if you are using this secured credit card to repair credit

I look at it this way: I have the money deposited, and it is safe, just like being in the bank. Then when you can qualify for unsecured credit cards, you can eventually replace the best secured credit cards with unsecured cards. However, you don't want to remove one until another unsecured card shows up on your credit report or you will, hurt your score, Then you can start removing these high annual fee cards with no or low annual fee cards, and get your money back that you used to secure them. In addition, you do not have to deposit mush for these to be effective. Start with the minimum if that is all you can afford. If you have no savings, then start saving! You need these cards to fix your credit.

If you are trying to compare the offers and determine what is the best secured credit card then you will have a tough time if you do not first understand what you want this card to do for you. Do you want this to be a rebuilding credit card otherwise known as a credit card to rebuild credit? Does this need to be a credit card for bad credit or do you just want the best secure credit card? To answer any of these questions, the first thing you need to establish is that you want this card to report your line of credit to each of the major credit reporting bureaus.

Any credit card for bad credit is designed to help you build credit as well, as you will see that the best of these all offer reporting your usage to the established credit rating agencies. What this does is add a new account to your credit report and this has a positive effect on your credit ratings. Many people will obtain the best secured credit cards just for this purpose as they are very useful in rebuilding credit and the secure credit card companies issue these cards to people that have no credit or average credit.

I would like to recommend one card as being better than the other, but these companies tend to change their offer so frequently that you actually need to review the current offers in order to determine which card is offering the lowest fees along with the services that you want from this line of credit. You want to carefully look at their annual fees and for any hidden application fees or other fees that will surprise you after you have sent them your money. I had this happen to me where I sent them my deposit and there will my credit line came back it was lower than I had anticipated because there was a fee that I had not noticed that was deducted from the amount that I sent to them. So to avoid any unexpected surprises, make sure you know what the fees are and how much credit line you will have after they have accepted your deposit on this secure credit card.

If you have never used one of these, you will be very happy in that these are not like a prepaid card or a debit card but they are actually no different than any other credit card that will be issued by any bank. These cards are indistinguishable from a unsecured credit card in that they have nothing printed on them that would let anyone know that they are anything other than a normal card. They are also accepted anywhere and everywhere that a normal card would be accepted so that you do not have to worry about where you can use this card. This is another reason people will hold these cards in that even if you prefer to pay with your debit card, they are not always accepted everywhere as a deposit.

In the event you have to use this card more than you would like, all that you need to do is pay the monthly bill in full and you will not incur any interest charges. I do not pay much attention to the interest rate they charge as I make it a practice to pay the bill as soon as it arrives and therefore I incur no interest charges. Occasionally I can see that I paid a few cents in interest, but in exchange for what this is doing to my credit scores, it is a very small price to pay because my credit scores are now much higher than they were when I started using these cards.

You can expect your scores to increase from 50 to 100 points just by holding two of these cards for six months to a year. I also suggest that you keep these cards because they end up being an established line of credit and needs help your credit ratings. Even if you do not use a card, keep it and just pay the annual fee as the impact on your credit report is worth the cost.

Secure credit cards that report to the credit rating agencies are the fastest and most effective way to establish new credit or fix bad credit. Moreover, they are cheap when compared to the other options, such as getting a high interest car loan, or furniture loans. These cards only charge you the annual fee and better yet, if you take my advice on what are "the best secured credit cards", you will soon see that they work.