Do I wait, or apply now?

[Anonymous]

Hi Everyone,

Some of you may remember a post of mine a couple months ago about finding a card to pay rent. Since paying with a visa costs $62 and paying with discover cost about 3.50, I would like a discover card. I decided on Discover it miles, because rent is by far my biggest monthly expense and the miles card will give me the most back every month on that expense.

I was thinking of holding off til the new year, but I'm getting that itch. If it's a bad idea to apply now, just tell me. You guys know your stuff. I apped and received 5 cards this year.

CU card : $5,000 in Jan
Chase freedom : apped in JAN, $1500, auto cli to $2500
NFL extra: feb $750, just been using for netflix and wanting to cancel it
Boa Cash rewards : FEB. $2500, HP last month up to $6700
Chase Freedom Unlimited : April, $3,000. Auto cli to 4k.

I believe my real aaoa is between 3 and 4 yrs. I have charge account with a car place, les schwab. That's about 7 or 8 yrs old. I also have a closed boa card reporting, it was 8 yrs old.

My overall utilization is about 13%, but have a furniture return that will be lowering that some. So right now I have about 23% utilization on BOA and about 36% on original Freedom Card. Scores in the 670 to 695 range. Although, something must have changed. My CK scores shot up yesterday and I did some prequals online and am suddenly qualifying for cards online that I've never qualified for. I don't know if that's a good judge or not, but I was only qualified for Capital one mastercard and qs with annual fee for a few months. Now I'm prequalified for the QS and the venture. Citi was only qualifying me for the DC. Now I have that and the Hilton Honors, diamond preferred, simplicity, and AA advantage. So I don't know if that means anything.

I have a paid off car loan and one open student loan. No lates at all on anything. I do have 3 paid med collections keeping me down. One hits 7 yrs next year.

So what do you think? Is adding 6 news cards in a year too much? I had only had one cc for 8 yrs, then this year I apped for 5. Or should I go for it? I don't want AA, but I know it's always a possibility.

Thanks!

[takeshi74]

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@Anonymous wrote:
Is adding 6 news cards in a year too much? I had only had one cc for 8 yrs, then this year I apped for 5.

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If the one credit card and the Les Schwab account were the only accounts that you had prior to adding 6 new cards, yes.  After reading your OP again it looks like you may have had some more accounts but you would still have a thin profile with a lot of new accounts.

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@Anonymous wrote:
I was thinking of holding off til the new year, but I'm getting that itch. 

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Don't just app because of an itch.  If you're citing an itch then you probably shouldn't app.

Understand your profile and how much new account and credit seeking activity it can support.

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@Anonymous wrote:
I decided on Discover it miles, because rent is by far my biggest monthly expense and the miles card will give me the most back every month on that expense.

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So why did you apply for all the other cards first?  You should be apping for rewards cards based on your major spend categories.  Since rewards on spend are a tiny fraction of spend you want to look at rewards where you have the largest amounts of spend.

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@Anonymous wrote:
My overall utilization is about 13%, but have a furniture return that will be lowering that some. So right now I have about 23% utilization on BOA and about 36% on original Freedom Card. Scores in the 670 to 695 range.

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Which scores are those?  Which model(s) and which CRA(s)?  670-695 sounds low.  Keep in mind that 30% isn't ideal.  It's far from it and just a suggested max.

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@Anonymous wrote:
My CK scores shot up yesterday and I did some prequals online and am suddenly qualifying for cards online that I've never qualified for.

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Never rely on prequals.  Always consider the relevance of any given scoring model/CRA combo.  Your Credit Karma scores, for example, are only relevant to creditors that use a TU or EQ VantageScore 3.0 in the decision on a product.  Same consideration applies for any scoring model -- even the FICO models.

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@Anonymous wrote:
I do have 3 paid med collections keeping me down.

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Always see what you can do to address derogs.  Carefully research to see if you can get them removed.  Since they're medical, take a look at whychat's method.  Get your reports clean and then consider applying for products that suit you.

[Anonymous]

I apped for those first because I was not living in this place then. I just moved here. I had a boa and a les schwab open about 8 yrs ago. Boa I closed, the other is a charge acct I never use, but it's there doing no harm.

[Anonymous]

Those scores are from fico scores my banks give me.

[Anonymous]

I just realized some of my new clis haven't updated to the CRA's yet, so I guess I do need to wait. I also want to pay the freedom card off first, so guess I need another month or two for everything to update in time.

[Anonymous]

I would wait. That's alot of new accounts in a short span period.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the reply. My original time frame was Jan/Feb. If I do that, then I'd have 8 months between my last app. I'd also have aged 2 accts 1 yr. Or 4 accts one year of get past feb. That time frame seem a little better?

[austinguy907]

If you really want the Miles card you could probably pull it off.  Personally though with the way things look in the marketplace for credit right now I would probably wait until your last app ages to 1 year.  The thing with Discover is they're pretty conservative to start off with so, you'll probably get a 1000-2000 limit to start with and then every 90 days maybe get another $500 CLI from them to start off the first year.  If you let things age a bit you should be able to get your scores higher to the point where they might approve something in the 4K or 5K range and CLI's that look better over $1500/increase.  

[Anonymous]

Thanks Everybody. I just needed to hear it from the experts. I will hold off until at least Jan/feb.

[newhis]

The Discover card has a promotion that will match your cash/miles for the first year, they may have it by Jan/Feb or not.

With Discover IT you will get 2% your rent the first year and with Discover Miles you'll get 3%.

If you wait, I'm sure you will get a better SL. Just work on your util and try to remove anything bad from your reports.