How Often to Apply for a New Credit Card

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone,

I am newer to the credit world and have been building my credit for the last year and three months. Since then, I have acquired the following lines of credit: $500 Student Card Visa, $1,000 Kohl's Cash Card, $1,250 Paypal Online Credit, and most recently I was approved for $2,200

U.S. Bank Visa Cash+ Signature card. I have been maintaining 100% payments, less than 10% utilization ratio, and currently, have no debt. 

I'm looking to take full advantage of travel perks in the future when I build my credit score up more and more. I currently stand around 730 on Credit Karma (vantage 3.0 score). So, my question is this... I understand a good number of accounts/account age will have some impact on my credit score. How frequently could I apply for cards? I currently have 4 hard inquiries (3 drop off in the Fall), and I am disputing one duplicate inquiry through Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. How frequently can I apply for credit cards? I have seen 3-4 months on most articles for people who have excellent credit... I am not in that realm yet of excellence, I was thinking every 6-8 months?

Any opinions or advice is greatly appreciated, I also treat my credit cards like a debit card and feel very comfortable managing them.

[Anonymous]

Welcome

Sounds like you are off to a decent start. I think before you apply for mulitple cards that you should grow your current US Bank card and save the HP's for a bit. I typically follow the 6-8 month range for applying and or asking for a CLI increase. But for the US bank card If you wait about 6 months with good payments you should be able to use the link to request a increase. Some members on here have reported doing this. Increasing your available CL will show future potential creidtors you can handle higher balances.

If you did want to app for something with your scores assume there are no hidden baddies ie CO , Charge offs , BK's then you should maybe start by using cc prequal sites to help you know before applying if you might have a shot. I like Discover, Chase and AMEX they seem to be decent from people i've heard from if the offer has a solid APR ( ie 18% vs 18-20% ) if its a range its typically not that solid of an offer. But most of the larger well known CC co's have prequal sites. Start there and when you are confident apply. And honestly thats how you find the best travel/rewards deals as well so should benefit you in doing. 

best of luck!

[Anonymous]

Hi,

What is a pre-equal site exactly? Do you mind sharing a specific site?

Thank you.

[Anonymous]

You could use creditkarma or wallethub and alot of people do. But I dont trust their prequals they seem to result in more denials in my exp. Other then that you would search for the credit ie Capital One prequal into google then walk through the info to see what you might prequalify for. The same thing for Discover and Amex, Chase, Usbank, Citibank. These will have prequal site again just search for them. Here is the Amex one just so you know what they should look like ; 

https://www.americanexpress.com/us/credit-cards/check-for-offers/

On all these sites it should say it wont impact your credit bc its a soft pull justa peak at your credit vs a full credit pull or hard pull. Also note that these are just giving you an idea if you would be approve they aren't gaurenteed approvals. Some creditors will send email offers and also mailers through the mail look out for those. They might be a little better then doing the prequal site bc sometimes those offers will tell you its pre-approved for X amount of dollar credit line and a specific rate. I look out for those all the time. They could also show up online when your logged into your cc account , maybe under " offers " so be sure to look.

[RicHowe]

American Express

https://www.americanexpress.com/us/credit-cards/check-for-offers/

Chase

https://www.chase.com/prequalified

Citi Bank 

https://www.citicards.com/cards/credit/application/flow.action?isInvitation=N&OC=CC-CITI-3D3&intc=2~...

Bank of America

https://secure.bankofamerica.com/secure-offers/public/customizedOffers/

Discover 

https://www.discovercard.com/application/fmo

Capital One

https://findmycard.capitalone.com/en/PageVersions/LandingPages/LP_ONE_V01.aspx

[Gmood1]

You should pull your true Fico8 scores before doing anything. You can get those from www.creditchecktotal.com for $1. Just cancel within 7 days.

Once you know your standard FICO scores it will be easier for us to know what direction may be best.

[SouthJamaica]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Hi everyone,

I am newer to the credit world and have been building my credit for the last year and three months. Since then, I have acquired the following lines of credit: $500 Student Card Visa, $1,000 Kohl's Cash Card, $1,250 Paypal Online Credit, and most recently I was approved for $2,200

U.S. Bank Visa Cash+ Signature card. I have been maintaining 100% payments, less than 10% utilization ratio, and currently, have no debt. 

I'm looking to take full advantage of travel perks in the future when I build my credit score up more and more. I currently stand around 730 on Credit Karma (vantage 3.0 score). So, my question is this... I understand a good number of accounts/account age will have some impact on my credit score. How frequently could I apply for cards? I currently have 4 hard inquiries (3 drop off in the Fall), and I am disputing one duplicate inquiry through Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. How frequently can I apply for credit cards? I have seen 3-4 months on most articles for people who have excellent credit... I am not in that realm yet of excellence, I was thinking every 6-8 months?

Any opinions or advice is greatly appreciated, I also treat my credit cards like a debit card and feel very comfortable managing them.

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It's not a question of how many is too many. There's no bright line. The more applications you make, the worse your scores will be. The less applications you make, the better your scores will be.

At this point you've been approved for a prime card, the US Bank card. US Bank is above average in toughness in approvals. So clearly whatever applications you make in the future should be for prime cards only -- good banks and/or credit unions. No store cards, PayPal, consumer finance, etc.

What you should be doing is finding out your FICO scores. Your Vantage scores are meaningless. Once we know your FICO scores, and some of the cards you're thinking of applying for, what kind of travel perks you're interested in..... we'll have a better idea of what advice to give.

[Anonymous]

One of the best ways, though nothing is ever 100% fallible, is to make sure that if you get a prequalified offer, it's at a "single-figure" APR or, at least, that the APR's offered are within a small range (no more than 3 or 4 percentage points from lowest to highest). A single-figure APR cited in a prequalified or preapproved offer is, as I said sometime last year, as close to guaranteed as you'll get in this game. If you get a large-spread APR offer, usually 10 points or so from lowest to highest, this is essentially a marketing offer and you're rolling the dice if you do apply. Some sites (Capital One's, for example) are more reliable than others in their prequal offers; I've tried BoA a number of times over the past year and never gotten anything better than a 10-point spread. Contrariwise, yesterday I got a single-figure APR offer on Cap One's Quicksilver Rewards Visa which is about 6 percentage points lower than my current QS Mastercard, took the chance on applying, and got a $10,000 SL.

[jlitnns]

I just ran pre-qual on citi site and it said I have no offers available but check out the 4 offers below, so those 4 offers have 15-25% APR range. BUT, above that is the Costco Citi card (which is what I want) and it has 0% intro APR for 7 months and a fixed 16.49% APR.

What does that mean? I'm getting mixed feelings from Citi!?!?!?

[dsotm76]

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@Gmood1 wrote:

You should pull your true Fico8 scores before doing anything. You can get those from www.creditchecktotal.com for $1. Just cancel within 7 days.

Once you know your standard FICO scores it will be easier for us to know what direction may be best.

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I'd like to chime in on this.  CCT is an AMAZING site!  I spent a lot of time using CreditWise on my C1 card and then the CK site.  My scores would never go above the low 600s.  I did CCT and found out that my actual FICO8 scores were above 730 and now 744/762/762 (Ex TU Eq respectively).  It's worth the dollar trial.  They even gave me a second trial.  Look at that before applying and see where you really stand.