Read me! Unbiased Review! Save Yourself the $3500
I signed up for Fund and Grow back in November, and I want to share an honest and detailed review before you consider spending $3,500 on their service. So far, I’ve been disappointed, and I don’t believe the value is worth the cost. You can do this work yourself and save the money. Customer Support: The One Positive I’ll give credit where it’s due—customer support is solid. Their team is U.S.-based, responsive, and helpful. However, that’s where the positives end. The First Major Issue: Paying Down Debt First Once you sign up and pay, you’re required to pay down your existing credit card balances before they’ll even start the process. Specifically: • Personal credit cards must be under 35% utilization • Business credit cards must be under 50% utilization This completely defeats the purpose of using their service to get more credit—instead, you have to come up with even more cash before they’ll help you. Then, once you pay down your balances, you have to wait for your credit reports to update, which usually happens at the beginning of the next month. This can delay the process by 2-3 months, conveniently eating into their 60-day money-back guarantee. Minimal Funding and Lack of Value When they finally started applying for credit, they only submitted four applications in the first round. Even worse, they asked me to apply for one of them myself—wasn’t that what I paid them for? I was only approved for $42,000 in total, which is far less than I expected. The cards they applied for were: • Chase Business Card • U.S. Bank Business Card • Flagstar Business Card • Amex Business Card For reference, my credit score was 740 before we even started, yet I still had to pay my balances down before they would begin. The Hidden Work & Costs After getting me approved, they told me to send dispute letters to all three credit bureaus to remove the hard inquiries from my credit report. This is critical because they rely on increasing your limits in 3-4 months, but banks look at how many recent inquiries you have. For $3,500, you’d think they would handle credit repair, but no—you have to do it yourself. They provide template letters, but you have to: • Fill them out • Mail them via certified mail • Hope the bureaus remove the inquiries So far, only Experian removed them, and now I have to send the second round of letters, taking even more of my time and money. They do offer a third-party service to handle this for an extra fee. Pushing Aggressive Credit Usage They strongly encourage you to use your new credit aggressively and pay it down quickly to build relationships with the banks. I get why, but the whole reason I signed up was to get 0% interest credit to buy fix-and-flip properties without needing cash upfront. $42,000 doesn’t even come close to meeting my goals—especially when the highest limit I got was an $18,000 Chase card. Just last week, I personally applied for a $14,000 Citibank card on my own, proving I could have done this without Fund and Grow. Final Thoughts: Save Your Money I just wanted to warn others before you pay for this service. It will cost you far more in the long run—both in time and additional expenses. If you want to do it yourself, I’ve outlined the exact steps you need to take and which cards I was approved for. There’s no reason you can’t DIY this process and save $3,500. You’re welcome!