This is my policy: overall utilization is kept to 15% maximum, less than 10% is best, individual card util 30% max.
Gardening until September 2025
@Anonymous wrote:Feel free to add to the list or poke holes, below is entirely my opinion of course.
- Keep at least the sum of your total credit lines with a lender in a savings account with that lender. This establishes beyond your stated income that you have the means to cover your spending at all times.
- Stop opening 10 cards in a year. Normal, non-extreme-risk users might open 1 or 2 a year, if that. In addition, "don't poo where you eat", meaning, don't try to milk the lender you are most comfortable with or enjoy the products of by doing sketchy things like MS or even fringe behavior like systematically closing and reopening the same card for a bonus.
- Keep your utilization in check and don't carry massive balances, especially if you have no other banking history with that lender (see point 1).
I guess keeping large amounts of money with a lender would help with some AA (ie if they are concerned about ability to repay), but will not necessarily prevent other types of AA. That being said I'm not about to do business with a lender and move all my checking accounts just out of a concern of AA and it does not seem like a reasonable or necessary step for avoiding AA.
I think I have done up to 8 apps a year or so. This point is heavily dependent on the thickness of your file. If you have a thin file you can easily wind up with AA if you all of a sudden add 10 accounts when you had none before. If you have a thick file then adding new accounts is much much less likely to trigger AA. I think going forward I will try to limit my new apps within a single year to four to six apps. This will include both business and personal apps. You most certainly do not need to limit yourself to one or two apps a year in order to avoid AA. However, it is best not to app for more than four cards in any six month period. App sprees can put lenders on alert so some pacing makes sense and also if going for signup bonuses you don't want to put yourself under a lot of pressure to make massive initial spend.
You should not do MS with a card you actually want to keep. Small amountts of MS may not cause any issues, but whenever you engage in that behavior you are assuming the risk of AA and really have no reason to be pissed if a lender closes you down because of it. Some lenders are more tolerant than others. Opening and closing multiple cards for the bonuses by itself will not likely trigger AA. People do it all the time. Now if you are doing that in conjunction with some of the other factors listed, like apping for 10 cards at a time etc, then you could get AA but more than likely what will happen is you will start getting denied. Again this is something that will not likely trigger AA if you show restraint and don't push the limits. This also comes back to knowing your lender. Different lenders have different rules when it comes to opening/closing the same cards or numerous products with the same lender (e.g., amex once in lifetime bonus, chase 5/24, citi 18 month wait between bonuses, etc). I try to avoid closing cards when I can. I will see if I can get the AF waived or if not see if there is a non-AF version so I can keep the account open beyond the one year. With cards that do not have those options I end up closing them out if the benefits will not offset the AF going forward.
Carrying massive balances is probably never a good thing. You can carry balances without issue though, especially on 0% APR cards. When doing so I like to make sure the balances don't take up more than 30-40% of my overall credit line with that card. I make at least double if not more of the min payments each month. If I am going to do a BT I reasearch which lenders like BTs more than ohers. Some are very sensitive about this stuff and others are overenjoyed if you do a BT to them.
In summary you really have to know yourself and be critical of your own credit profile. What one person can do an get away with may not be something that your profile can support. It is not one size fits all, but with some patience and a reasoned approach most people can avoid AA.
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@Loquat wrote:How about just using your cards responsibly and don't do things that will cause concerns for your respective lender. Most of us here know the triggers and a running list is probably overkill. If you don't know the triggers of a lender then use that lovely search box at the top of the page and take a look around the forum...certainly you'll find answers to most common issues. Living your life worrying about AA seems like a huge waste of time and energy. If you have to ask yourself if something you're about to do will spook a lender then you'll probably right, which is why you questioned yourself, and you probably shouldn't do it.
While many here do know these things there are always new readers who may not even be posting that don't and a thread like this will help them learn about triggers from AA. We see posts from people who get hit with AA and then when we see what they did it is clear what caused the AA. They did what they did because they didn't know better and a thread like this may help someone avoid a future AA especially if they are still early in their credit journey. If even one person avoids an AA as a result of reading this thread it was worth it. 
@Anonymous wrote:
What exactly is MS? I've seen it several times and have looked on the common abbreviations thread but it's not there and it's driving me crazy.
Weird it really should be, since everytime someone says it in a post there is anotherpost asking what it is.