8 replies to this topic

[4502163033]

My credit reports are now almost spotless. I have one medical collection that is due to age off or disappear due to an obsolete dispute in the very near future. My scores are: TU 758 on 6/9/12, EQ 769 on 6/17/12, and EX FAKO (from creditsesame.com) 715 on 6/17/12, and VantageScore (from CreditKarma.com) 770 on 6/17/12. The only other thing hurting my scores is AAoA and length of credit history. I have two inquiries on my reports--one is almost two years old, and one is a year old.

I currently have two credit cards: I have an Orchard Bank (HSBC, now Capital One) Mastercard with a CL of $1,200, and a Capital One Mastercard with a CL of $500.

I am an AU on several of my parents' cards, and have been for many years.

I previously had a Citi credit card that was a paid charge off, but it has now aged off of my reports.

I'm 30 years old, and I make about $40,000 a year, but I'm starting a side business that should add $10,000 to $20,000 in income a year.

I am not in the market for a new car or a house in the near future, so I'm not too worried about dinging my credit score with a bunch of applications. I also figure it's a good idea to knock out a bunch of them at once, because they'll all age out at the same time. Also, once I have a handful of good credit cards, I don't plan on applying for anything else for quite some time.

How many cards should I apply for? I figure I should be leaning towards prime cards, since my scores are now pretty decent.

The cards I'm considering applying for are:

*Citi Forward Visa (no annual fee and 5x Amazon rewards)

*PenFed Visa Platinum Cash Rewards Card (5% back on gas)

*Fidelity Investment Rewards Visa Signature Card (no annual fee)
*Chase Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards Plus Visa Signature Card ($69/yr) or Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards Premier Visa Signature Card ($99/yr) since I tend to fly Southwest domestically.
*Saks Fifth Avenue World Elite Mastercard (no annual fee and World Elite perks)
*US Bank Cash+ Visa Signature (no annual fee and good rewards)
*Barclaycard Rewards World Mastercard (no annual fee)
*RBS Platinum Mastercard (no annual fee)
*UBS Visa Signature Card (no annual fee)
*PNC CashBuilder Visa Credit Card (no annual fee)
*Wells Fargo Cash Back Visa (no annual fee)
*Ameriprise World Mastercard (no annual fee)

*Bank of America BankAmericard Travel Rewards Visa Signature Card (no annual fee)

*Starwood Preferred Guest Amex ($65/yr)

*Chase Sapphire Preferred ($95/yr) or Chase Sapphire (no annual fee)

*Delta Community Credit Union Platinum Rewards Visa Card (no annual fee and primary insurance on rental cars)

*Patelco Visa Platinum (no annual fee)

*PSECU Visa

*Nasa Federal Credit Union Platinum Cash Rewards Card (no annual fee)

*Navy Federal Credit Union Platinum Card (no annual fee)

*Lockheed Federal Credit Union Visa Platinum (no annual fee)

*Justice Federal Credit Union Visa Platinum Rewards Card (no annual fee)

*Alliant Credit Union Platinum Rewards Visa Card (no annual fee)

*American Express Zync or American Express Green Charge Card

*American Express Blue Cash Everyday or American Express Blue Cash Preferred

*Chase Marriott Rewards Visa Signature Card ($45/yr)

*Chase Hyatt Card ($75/yr)

*British Airways Visa Signature Card ($95/yr)

*Citi Platinum Select AAdvantage($95/yr) or Citi Gold AAdvantage Card ($50/yr)

*Discover More Card (no annual fee) or Discover Miles Card (no annual fee)

*JCB Card (no annual fee)

I probably shouldn't apply for all 31 of these. How many should I apply for? Which ones should I apply for first?

Also, how do I mitigate the damage of all the inquiries. I figure I can B* the TU and EQ pulls. Should I freeze my EX report before I apply? Is there any way of spreading out the inquiries so that only a few appear per report?

Edited by 4502163033, 18 June 2012 - 11:44 PM.

[haydeno]

Do not apply for 31 cards, that likely would result in about 25+ denials and likely a few of the newly approved cards to be closed when they see the 31 inq on their ar softs.

From my experience most lenders will auto deny you if you apply for more than 2 cards with them(or less) or if you have more than 5-6 inq in the last 6 months(or less).

US Bank is very inq sensitive so that should be first if you want it, followed by citi\chase\bofa, navy seems fairly lenient but have no 1st hand exp and amex at least for me was pretty lenient with inq count (approved with 7 in last 6 months)

I would choose no more than 4 at the very most but would highly recommend waiting until you get that last collection off if you expect it to be removed soon in order to save yourself from all the inq.

Given your history, I would avoid the signature cards as they require 5k limits generally as well as citi (prior co) and penfed (high high credit requirements). Consider one or two of these:


Navy Federal Credit Union Platinum Card
American Express Zync
US Bank Cash+ Visa Signature (no annual fee and good rewards)
Barclaycard Rewards World Mastercard (no annual fee)
Bank of America BankAmericard Travel Rewards Visa Signature Card (no annual fee)

Edited by haydeno, 19 June 2012 - 12:00 AM.

[selfmadetool]

I probably shouldn't apply for all 31 of these.

Why not? What's stopping you? I'm just kidding. Yes, you probably shouldn't.

Which categories do you spend mostly? You have quite a few travel related cards in your list. You mentioned you fly Southwest domestically, but is it a lot of traveling? If not, I would skip those. PenFed has a 5% back travel card, but I hear they are conservative.

I wouldn't apply for too many cards with annual fees unless my usage would justify them.

Depending on if I'm on my own or living with my parents, I would only apply for 3-5 cards.

Based on my spending patterns, my list is below.

Citi Forward Visa (I purchase from Amazon a lot)
US Bank Cash+ Visa Signature (choose your two 5% categories)
American Express Blue Cash Everyday (backdating in the future)

I would throw in a credit union somewhere in the mix (you may have a hard inquiry to join and another for the card application) and a Barclays Ring card to my list even though it's not on yours (low interest rate in case I need to finance something).

Good luck, and let us know how everything turns out!!

[4502163033]

I'm of course not going to apply for 31 cards. Those are just the ones that seem to me to be decent cards.
I am waiting until the last collection is off before I apply for anything. You mentioned avoiding Citi because I have a past charge off. Why is this? Will I be blacklisted? I have read that they only blacklist for unpaid COs.

Also, how many cards should I ultimately have? I figure generally the more available credit that I have, the better. That will keep my util down. I don't usually spend more than $1500 a month on credit cards, so I'd like to have about 10k in available credit as a minimum, but I can't imagine any downside to having more. Assuming I should ultimately have more than 4 or so cards, how often do I apply for new ones? If I can bump the inqs off of my reports, does it matter how long I wait? As long as I freeze EX, I should be able to get rid of inquiries in about a month if I do B* correctly, right? Or do I want to avoid this in case I get a manual review and they see that my cards are all pretty new? I'd like to get as many cards as I can as soon as possible, because I'd like to have more older accounts down the road when I'm looking to purchase a house or something. My AAoA will take a big hit as I get new cards, but it should help in the long term, right?

[trubliever82]

I'm of course not going to apply for 31 cards. Those are just the ones that seem to me to be decent cards.
I am waiting until the last collection is off before I apply for anything. You mentioned avoiding Citi because I have a past charge off. Why is this? Will I be blacklisted? I have read that they only blacklist for unpaid COs.

Also, how many cards should I ultimately have? I figure generally the more available credit that I have, the better. That will keep my util down. I don't usually spend more than $1500 a month on credit cards, so I'd like to have about 10k in available credit as a minimum, but I can't imagine any downside to having more. Assuming I should ultimately have more than 4 or so cards, how often do I apply for new ones? If I can bump the inqs off of my reports, does it matter how long I wait? As long as I freeze EX, I should be able to get rid of inquiries in about a month if I do B* correctly, right? Or do I want to avoid this in case I get a manual review and they see that my cards are all pretty new? I'd like to get as many cards as I can as soon as possible, because I'd like to have more older accounts down the road when I'm looking to purchase a house or something. My AAoA will take a big hit as I get new cards, but it should help in the long term, right?

Remember your in a marathon not a sprint.

[patz2009]

Citi Forward Visa (I purchase from Amazon a lot)
US Bank Cash+ Visa Signature (choose your two 5% categories)
American Express Blue Cash Everyday (or Preferred, depending on your spending) (backdating in the future)

This list looks good to me, for the most part.

One thing I wanted to bring up though was that you're looking for a card with primary rental card insurance, and you like travel a good bit. You could sign up for the Chase Sapphire Preferred, get the 40k points signing bonus, keep it for a while, then request a product change to the JP Morgan Select, which is very similar to the Sapphire Preferred in many ways but has a couple of differences. One of those being the addition of primary rental car insurance.

Also, if you're looking for a CU card and want a good base cashback rate, the Nasa card really can't be beat.

Edited by patz2009, 20 June 2012 - 01:34 AM.

[selfmadetool]

After some consideration, I wanted to return to this thread to offer a suggestion. It would be beneficial if you obtained at least one Visa, Discover, MasterCard and American Express. With the exception of MasterCard, I've had instances where one of the four weren't accepted. Also, don't consider yourself diversified if you have two of the four only under one creditor (e.g., a Bank of America Visa and Bank of America American Express) in case you receive the axe or if your accounts are frozen.

I've addressed some of the questions from your most recent post below.

Also, how many cards should I ultimately have?

This question is a hard one to answer because there isn't a one fit for all answer. I would only apply for credit that you need and only acquire as many cards as you can comfortably manage.

Assuming I should ultimately have more than 4 or so cards, how often do I apply for new ones?

The rate I would apply would depend on my need for new cards (e.g., I would apply for a travel card if I had an upcoming trip) and the limits I was receiving. If I was only issued toy card limits, I would stop applying and garden for a while. In 4-6 months I would try for some CLIs. If I received higher limits, I would apply for new cards after the limits were reflected on my credit reports since higher limits beget higher limits. If you're receiving nice limits straight out of the gate, then I would do 2 or 3 every 6 months and bump off new inquiries between applications.

If I can bump the inqs off of my reports, does it matter how long I wait?

Yes, the new cards you receive will be new accounts, which aren't favorably looked upon by some creditors and scoring models.

My AAoA will take a big hit as I get new cards, but it should help in the long term, right?

It's all relative to your needs. You can have a fantastic credit score or obtain a mortgage with only a couple of cards. However many cards you get, just take care of them and let time do the rest.

[4502163033]

So I ended up applying for US Bank Cash+ Visa Signature, Amex Zync, and Discover Cashback Bonus. I was approved for Amex Zync, and Discover Cashback Bonus with a $2000 CL.

US Bank denied me for the Cash+ Visa Signature, but offered me the Flex Perks Cash Rewards card. It's not as good a card, but I didn't want to waste the hard pull, so I accepted the offer. They gave me a $5000 CL.

Not bad, all in all.

[selfmadetool]

I was approved for Amex Zync, and Discover Cashback Bonus with a $2000 CL.

Congratulations!

US Bank denied me for the Cash+ Visa Signature, but offered me the Flex Perks Cash Rewards card. It's not as good a card, but I didn't want to waste the hard pull, so I accepted the offer. They gave me a $5000 CL.

Considering the CL, good call. One of the CB heavy hitters will be able to tell you if a PC down the road after you show some usage is possible.

I don't know what your spending habits are, so it's difficult to recommend apping for cards further, but have you given any thought to what's next on the list? Do you have any interests in retail cards? Do either of your parents have any American Express cards you can use for backdating?