The journey begins..
Well after thinking it over and decided I would like to buy a house in the future and probably a car in a few years, I decided I should probably get a credit card to help re-establish my credit history. I didn't know the waters were so shark infested. Wow, some of these cards were just ridiculous with fees and such. I applied with the usual suspects, Capital One, Target Card, Chase, Citi etc. I checked out Juniper, Orchard Bank and a couple others as well. I was denied for all the no-fee cards, of course. The other cards fees were crazy, including $19 application fees which had to be paid before even being approved. I declined to waste my money on that. Finally after much shopping around and pretty much resolving myself to getting a secured card, I got approved by HSBC. Granted its a tiny limit, $300 and an annual fee of $59, but considering the options, I will take it. The interest rate of 14.90% is not too bad, and I believe it was 0% for the first 12 billing cycles. At least I can rent a car if I need to, and pay for my monthly gas costs for work which are reimbursed, so it should be pretty easy to pay off the balance in full every month. I feel like a human again, I have checking, savings and a credit card. I've been good on the savings so far socking away a good amount. $300 dollars doesn't seem like much, but its a start to where I want to go and rebuilding the ol' credit score from the high 500's. 
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