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for bills, is having it on autopay with the biller superior to using it manually to pay that biller? I prefer to manually manage all that as I have for years but I figure its beneficial to get that on a credit card and just make sure its paid off. I already basically use a bills bank account to do essentially this manually
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only purchase what I already have set aside/budgeted for and can payoff before the grace period
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anything else?


Open as many as you can. The “penalty” of opening new credits is lower than increasing your limit if you are just starting. Find no annual fee cards that give good welcome bonuses and get some “free” money. If they reject your application you can usually dispute it by calling and asking why and most of the time you can get approved by providing some extra documents. Other than that it’s just patience
Source: I migrated 8 years ago and had to start my credit score from scratch
Edit: adding fico score weights
Any counters to this? Seems a little counterintuitive but I have no doubt someone (maybe already you) has gamed and made it work for them
The “difficult” part of to manage too many credit cards. I got my score to 740-750 very quickly doing that, specially compared to other friends that arrived to the US around the same time as me
I had a capital one secured, then amex blue cash, capital one platinum, capital one savor, Chase Amazon prime, Chase bonvoy then started getting more premium cards when my score increased like like venture X and got all the airline ones for the bonus and then cancelled within the year (cancelling cards will hit your score for a few months but it should bounce back)