Rare Opportunity: I have a fresh, blank slate SSN.

My wife is immigrating to the United States and has zero credit history. She’s never had any point-bearing credit cards, bank accounts, rewards accounts, nothing.

If you could start it all over, what would the most optimal path be to accumulating maximum points, rewards, and cash back?

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Discover normally will approve a normal credit card (not secured or anything) if you have an income and no credit. It’ll be like $500 credit limit, but it’ll start a credit history.

It’s not great for points, but it’s what I tell all my friends in similar situations to do and it works well. After you have 6ish months of credit history on that, you can move to a better card.

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This

She will need to have some sort of credit history before she’s approved for any credit cards. Start by adding her to your lease or mortgage or car loan (not even sure if possible for mortgage or car loan)

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If she has an AMEX card in another country she could do a global transfer to the US even with no credit history here.

To answer your original question, at the moment I’d start with a Chase Sapphire Preferred to get the 100k point bonus. I suspect she wouldn’t be approved with no credit history, however

If you have an Amex account, transfer it to the US and it will also transfer credit history. Other than that get a Discovery prepaid credit card. Last option open a bank account and get a credit card through them. Plus a car loan or something if they allow it. All contribute to building credit. Monitor using Credit Karma

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Works either direction. And seems like it’s charge and credit. https://www.americanexpress.com/us/customer-service/global-card-relationship/

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I don’t remember the name of it but there is a credit card that is made for this type of situation. It links to your bank account and gives you a credit balance equal to the cash balance of the account. When you spend money it runs a credit transaction then pays the credit card. It’s free and it you are instantly approved since it’s just the cash you already have.

smart

I think it’s called a secured card which is for people with a thin file

likehelpfulsmart

We’ve had a similar situation with my wife, And both added her as an authorized user and got a secured credit card through a local credit union. Her credit karma scores are good with almost 2 years of history, but still having trouble getting her approved for major cards like the chase CSR - hoping this just requires a bit more history

Don't be so excited about all the love and care you'll get!


/s

Capital one usually approves people in this situation as well.

I’ve been in this situation… she should start to build her own credit history herself.

Look at cash secured cards from Discover & Capital One. I was able to open an Apple Card too.

Chase won’t approve any credit line until the SSN is at least 2 years old. Which actually annoyed me so much that I don’t have cards with them 😀

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