New Totse

So, loan decisions are sometimes based on your available credit, right? What's to stop me from opening, say, $10,000 worth of secured credit cards? Wouldn't it basically be like buying a better credit score?

You can do that, they want you to do that and will gladly give you the credit line if your credit score isn't terrible. They're a lot like casino owners. They know if they give you enough rope, you'll hang yourself with it. If I remember correctly credit score basically boils down to available credit against used credit so if you don't have a lot of used credit, they will give you credit lines until you do. At that point you're on the hook.

I picture it like this:

1) I get a $1000 secure credit line by putting a $1000 deposit

2a) A few months later I get another credit card with better rates because they see I have a $1000 line of credit

2b) I wait a year, get that $1000 back as more credit, and have $2000 "credit" on paper

You generally wont even need to do that if you keep a decent payment schedule. A lot of times the credit companies extend me lines of credit I didn't ask for in a vain hope that I'll run my credit up and they'll have me on the line forever.

To quote Norm Franz:

“Gold is the money of kings, silver is the money of gentlemen, barter is the money of peasants – but debt is the money of slaves.”

I'm not trying to wait per-say.

You could cheat by building a CPN and adding yourself as an authorized user. Thats sort less than legal though so your idea is better.