Hello Erica,
Welcome to the forums. I can tell by reading your post that you have taken the time to inform yourself about how to establish credit and I congratulate you for that.
Getting the secured cards was the first step. The next step is trying to get rid of those collections on your reports. I see you are already doing that, so keep up the good work. You want to try to remove all of them if possible. Do you know old your collections are? Remember that negative accounts fall off your reports after 7 years, so if you have collections this old, they might be falling off soon.
The last step is just paying on time, not maxing out your cards and having a lot of patience. Specially if you have collections on your reports, you need to have a lot of patience with those. It has taken me more than two years to get my scores high enough to finally get good cards. My scores have gone from around 580 to 711 during that time, but I feel having collections and lates on my reports have made things a lot harder for me.
The Capital One card is a great card for establishing credit or for rebuilding. I’m sure you also qualify for the $100 credit line increase by Capital One, the only things is that for some reason they don’t give that increase to everyone. I was given a $100 increase at around the 6 month mark, but I’ve heard a lot of people complaining about not getting one ever. So it seems like they give that increase randomly so don’t be discouraged if you don’t get it.
I’ve had the card for more than two years now and I haven’t received any more increases. I’m closing my account this month, I think it has served its purpose and I want my deposit back. This card never graduates, and I think it’s a shame that it doesn’t. Still, all positive information will remain on your files for 10 years or more, so it’s all good.
Will the Wells Fargo card unsecure at some point?