Long-time lurker and thought I would finally sign up. It looks like my time spent in the garden is starting to harvest some benefits.
Background: I've had two installment loans with an AAoA of 3 years and all on-time payments. Last summer I decided to pull the trigger on a Discover It card as my first form of revolving credit. With an EX score of 720, I was instantly approved with $1500 CL and the highest APR offer at 23.24%. Not bad for a "thin file", I guess. After 6 months of regular payments, it received an auto-CLI of $600. Then near the 12-month mark, another auto-CLI of $550. I've typically kept a balance on it during the promo period, but decided I wanted to work on improving my credit score - my reported TU score on monthly statements typically floated around the 715 mark. So I paid the balance down to 5% and let the new balance report. It came back with a 743!
Sunday morning, I was setting up a payment and glanced at the Luv button on the Discover account home screen. Feeling confident, I decided to give it a try. After updating my income & monthly rent costs, it continued to the next screen where I received a pleasant surprise: a CLI of $3950! Now we're making progress.
Fast forward to this morning, and I'm pondering over the end of the 0% interest promotion while reading about APR reductions on here. I start to feel confident again and decide to give the live chat a go to see if I'm eligible for an APR reduction. A few minutes later and the specialist tells me she can permanently reduce the APR on my card by 4.75%. Double win!
So it currently sits at: CL of $6600 & APR at 18.49%. A nice change from how it started.
I know it's not worth it to keep a balance on this card - I'm PIF since this is my last billing cycle with the promo rate - but I'm glad to see that I can still chip away at the APR while building my CL.
Which leads me onto my next card... that I'll post about once I've got all the details.
