Hard Pulls & Their Effects?

[Anonymous]

Hi guys, 

I'm a little confused about hard pulls. I know many have said there is a number we should stay below within a certain time period but I can't remember what that was. Can anyone help? We were discharged in April and since we've received a few credit cards and an auto loan. Currently we show about 6 pulls in the last 3 months. How does that affect me? How long do hard pulls stay on for? What's the magic number to stay below? I don't think we will be applying for anything else until April 2017 when I plan to apply for a Barclay's. Will these pulls made in April 2016 affect my chances of being approved? I also wanted to try to re-finance the car at 6 months meaning sometime in October...will these hard pulls affect me negatively?

Thanks to all on this forum!

[Anonymous]

Simply put, a hard pull is an inquiry of of your overall credit profile. It stays in your credit report for two years. Some lenders will deny you credit if they see too many hard pulls because it shows you are trying to obtain too much credit. They are inquiry sensitive.  Many of us on this forum consider hard pulls to be precious and we only pull the trigger when the odds are in our favor. You should be fine applying for Barclay in April 2017 as some inquiries may have fallen off by then. Go to the Auto Loan forum and you'll find a lot of information regarding their pulls. Good luck!!

[Anonymous]

I wish I knew how important hard pulls are in obtaining credit. I guess I was a little too late in finding that out and mostly from here. Nevertheless, I'll try not to do any unnecessary hard pulls until July 2018, when they all go away. Oh well. It is what it is.

[Anonymous]

If you do quite a few HPs at one time or around the same time to a lot of people (especially PenFed) they will think you're pyramiding. Which isn't a good thing, even if you're not and just trying to re establsh credit. Idealy you want as few HPs as possible after BK, and in general. HPs make your credit score go down, stay on your credit report for 2 years and take about 6 months to recover score wise. I wouldn't apply for anything else for at least 6 months since your last HP, and do it sparingly and be selective as to whom you're applying with. You'll get denied for too many credit inquiries and/or too many new accounts. When lending people want to see history and that you aren't a risk.

If you purchased a car, and went the dealership rout those don't hurt your score as badly and most places realize that it was a car purchase and it got pulled by a dozen people since the dealer put your app in CUDL to see who would take it.

[Anonymous]

Yeah. I learned a lot from here but the damage has already been done. Excessive credit inquiries and new accounts (11 of the reported new accounts opened in just 4 months and 2 still not reported, the AmEx Platinum Card and QuicksilverOne) are always the reason of my denials as of recent. I had a strategy in mind which is to apply everything that I WANT, not necessarily NEED which is bad, then stop since I'm not really a churner and avoid any further hard pulls. This obviously backfired after reading and learning everything on here. 

Well, I'm thankful at least for the credit card line up I have obtained. Getting approved on these premium cards with FiCO averaging 640-680, I can just "garden" (which is a new term I learned from here), let them mature and build my credit history, which is averaging 5 months right now. My home is not even showing up in my name since it was obtained on someone else's but I've been the one paying for it all since 2005. Well, hard lessons learned. I'll accept and deal the consequences. I essentially have no credit history to report of for 10 years !!!! After my financial crisis which included bankruptcy, tax collections, other collection accounts in 2005, I have been living off my debit card for 10 years. I had no problem paying cash for everything but I realized I was missing on a lot of the discounts, travel rewards, cash backs that a lot of people are enjoying through credit cards. Since I travel quite extensively internationally at least twice a year, i thought I'd jump on the band wagon with credit cards. 

From here on, I'm essentially done obtaining new credit card accounts, let what I have grow, get my house re-financed under my name by the end of year (something I didn't know I was able to do a long time ago). Now, I need to learn how to maximize these reward points I have that came with these cards. Perhaps travel a little more to utilize these points and get my mind off with my new obsession, getting credit cards just for the hell of it. It's getting hard to keep up. Thanks to autopay and pay after I use it. I keep my utilization ratio at 0%.