what is the best credit card for someone establishing credit or to fix bad credit?

Get a secured credit card. You will have to deposit say $500 to the bank if you want a $500 credit limit. Just keep paying it off for a year to build up good credit. This is what I did until the year was up, then I could get a regular credit card.

I would stay away from credit cards. They’re the reason most people have bad credit. Take a loan out for a car and re-pay it. That will establish credit. Or, a student loan. Credit cards are just too tempting when you’re already short on cash. Trust me!

I agree with posters 1 through 3. A secured card is the best kind of card that you can get to build credit especially because they’re the easiest to get. The reason for this is that it’s pretty much like you saying, “I’m going to risk my own money to prove that I can build credit”, which isn’t bad because you can set your own credit limit. The more money you’re able to deposit, the higher the limit, which in turn can help your credit score because it creates a cushion between the total debt you owe and the available credit. Also you can think of this as building credit with a savings accont, because at some point later on, you get the deposit back after you’ve proven that you can pay on time, which I would suggest starting up an emergency fund with it. The key to using it to make SMALL purchases that can be paid off on time every month, while adding to the deposit to increase the limit. Usually after a year, the card upgrades to a regular card and you get the deposit back.

I posted several links to some secured cards that should help. From my past experience, Bank of America offers the best secured card overall