I have been reading multiple posts but I cannot find a comprehensive answer to my questions. I am European and I have lived in the USA for about 6 years in the last 9 years. I never had a credit card, only debit. Never bought a car (I do not want one, I bike) or asked for a loan or mortgage. I always payed my rent and utility bills on time. I saved a good bunch of money during these years, but I need a loan to buy my dream house.
I called TransUnion and they said I have no credit history whatsoever (I could not pull up a credit report on AnnualCreditreport.com). My questions are:
I need to build my credit history. Should I get a secured credit card or should I get a basic unsecured one, such as an unsecured Capital One Platinum, which from what I read here is given also to people with no credit score?
What is the maximum monthly spending limit I should ask on my secured credit What? Which is the optimum value? I have a bunch of money saved, should I deposit 40k and set a 40k limit? This answer says the higher the better. Is it true? Or is there an optimum for getting credit scores?
Given that maximum limit, how much of it should I spend every month to maximize credit scores? I understand less than 30%, but what is best? 3%? 25%?
When is the best moment to pay off my credit? Should I pay it in full?
This point has NEVER been mentioned anywhere: I am super busy. There is no way I am going to check every month how much I owe and manually pay it off. Is there any way to set an auto-pay? And when is the day I should pay off? Right before the deadline? How many days before?
I do not really understand point 7 here. What does this mean:
You should keep the reported balance below 30% of the credit limit on your card.
This seems to contradict with (still on the point 7 there)try to make a payment before the billing cycle ends because the bank will report the balance to the credit bureaus
. If I have made a payment, doesn't the balance go to zero? How can it be 30%?I guess the things above apply only for secured credit cards, right? As for unsecured, what does still hold?
Thank you.