Stop by a college campus during opening week in the fall and there should be plenty of credit card offers in the union area. They usually have a desk setup with someone trying to push applications, offering some worthless toy to pull you in. Just sign up for one of those and you'll have $500 credit. Make a few purchases, don't go over your limit, and don't be late on your payments. Ideally you would pay in full every month. 6-12 months later you should be in a position to get an increased credit limit if you request it.
We pay as much as possible on credit, including utilities, and never go over $5k. I think a visa and mastercard with $1-2k credit limits should be plenty for a 1-2 person family. They obviously can go much higher though. I've run across people with 50k and 100k credit limits.
