Credit Cards For People With Bad Credit

I'm not one who plays close attention to credit card offers or constantly applies for new cards to get the sign up bonuses. I tend to find a few cards that provide good rewards for my needs and stick with those. There are many websites devoted to tracking credit card offers and rate and promos. NerdWallet in particular does a yearly roundup of such deals.

The cards with the best offers or bonus tend to be mainly for people with good credit. What do you do if your credit is not so good or even outright bad? For those people, finding a credit card is less about finding one that provides good perks, but more about finding one at all or one without a crazy high interest rate.

A Great Credit Card Guide

U.S. News & World Report has recently published what is the most comprehensive guide for credit cards for people with poor credit that I have seen. You can check it out here. It's a lengthy read, but full of good information, especially if you have poor credit and are looking for advice on how to improve it.

The article starts at the beginning, defining what a credit score is, how to get yours, and how to improve it. It then moves on to specific credit cards to look at and compare. What I really like is the article also lists what credit cards to avoid.

If you have poor credit and are looking for ways to change that, this article is well worth the time it takes to read and study.

New Credit Card Offer

Despite having started this post saying I don't follow credit card offers too closely, I will say I received an announcement for one that made me sit up and take notice. USAA has come out with a new card that offers either 1.5% cash back on all purchases or 2.5% cash back on all purchases. This caught my eye because most cash back card will give you 2% back on all purchases, sometime up to 5% from specific stores that change each quarter. That extra 0.5% could add up! (Note: The higher return requires a checking account with direct deposit at USAA.)

Not everyone will qualify for this. Besides the regular credit card approval process, you also have to be eligible to join USAA. This generally means you or someone in your family must have been in the military at some point. Full eligibility details can be found here.

I use USAA for insurance and some banking. They are a great company with fantastic customer service. *

Thoughts?

So what do you think? Do you have poor credit? If so, what are you doing, if anything, to improve it?


* Although I have not received any compensation for anything mentioned in this post, please see my disclosure statement for full details.