For the most part, lenders will want to see your charge off's paid off, and your loan paid for a few months before considering giving you credit. I started with a Capital One Secured card. You can apply with as little as $200 (that's what I recommend starting with) and then after six months they may give you an unsecured portion of $300 or so? The card will not convert to an unsecured card, but you can apply for an unsecured card after you have established a short relationship with them. After I had my secured card I received an preapproved offer from First National credit card for their Legacy Visa. They had an $75 processing fee and I think a $40 annual fee but their APR was decent, in fact I think they had 6 month intro rate 0%.

Those will be the kind of cards you will have to consider, and once your bad marks age, and you have established some new, good credit your scores will begin to rise. No one likes paying the annual fees, and have to deal with the limitations of strict terms, and small credit lines, but rebuilding is worth the hassle. Try the score match feature on the home page of FG to get an idea of what kind of cards you qualify for, but lenders tend to look at more than just your score. Like I said, typically, the older the bad mark, the less of an impact it has on your score, so that's important too.

It might take a couple of years before you qualify for some more decent cards, but you can close your older, lesser functional cards as time passes. My suggestion is to try and leave one old card open and not open too many at one time in the rebuilding process. A good time frame I think, is no more then every six months or so. Because, to have better scores, you would want to have 4 or less inquires. Well, if you apply only every six months, (because they fall off every 2 years) you will never have more than 4 inquires...even if the cards you apply for use the same agency, (i.e. Equifax, Transunion or Experian.) If you only apply for a new card every six months, and they banks use different agencies to check your credit, then you will be in even better shape, as far as inquires. But, if you have to take multiple hits in the rebuilding state, because you are having a hard time qualifying for a card, then that will be something you will have to consider as well. Just know that it could hurt your scores even more.

Trying to rebuild credit while eliminating bad credit. Would like to have a decent credit card, but don't want a ton of inquiries. Here is what I am working with, EQ- I student loan (60 days late) playing catch up and 1 hosp bill score 528. TU 2 charge offs and student loan score 530-ish. EXP. 2 charge offs and 1 hosp bill score 498. I have 2 new loans for positive but they are small. What are some good ones to try for???