Not yet in the States and getting Credit card offers in the States

[dis00 0]

Evening,

Ive been researching about building credit once I get over to the States so that me and the wife can buy asap. I worked in the US for about 9 months and have a SSN and my own checking account. My wife has her own checking account and we opened a joint account a few months ago. I often receive (at my wife's house) credit card offers, not sure if they are pre-approved or not, and I was wondering I i said attempt to get one of these cards and have the wife use it for gas and general shopping and have her clear the balance each month in order to build my credit score. Is this a good way of building credit?

Also, Ive heard that in the UK checking your credit score can actually harm your credit score. Im not sure if this is true but is there any negative/positive effect on checking a credit score in the US?

Thanks

Dean

[Moomin 292]

I'd call it snail mail spam. My husband gets it alot. "you can get a 1751 dollars credit here!" sounds personal but his mother got the same letter, and she is incapable of getting a credit card. My husband's creditscore it around 750 however I really doubt anything has been pre-approved.

Call up the bank and ask if it's pre-approved, that's your best way of finding out.

I know that applying for credit will affect the credit score. It shows every time when your credit file has been pulled. However, I'll let someone else take care of that question.

[dis00 0]

the offers are with capital one

[CHarvey80 72]

What I did to help my wife start to build credit is I added her to my current credit cards as a joint account holder.

This way there is more history on the card her name is on and her credit can build that much faster.

[Moomin 292]

the offers are with capital one

Yep, and you'll probably be getting some from Horizon, Centier and whatnot.

I get some from my own bank as well.

Try googling "capital one pre-approved mail" and see what comes up, or google some of the text in the letter. This is mostly the result I get when searching; http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100328084201AAwB4iR

[dis00 0]

Thanks I guessed something similar to the link you posted would be the case