In the next month I plan on applying to some or all of these: AMEX Blue Cash, Discover IT, Citi Double Cash, Amazon (If I get denied the Blue Cash with their Amazon promo, since I'm always buying stuff there). Looking for thoughts and strategies.
My current profile and situation:
EQ: 665, TU 680, EX 658
Cards: BofA $0/900, BofA 548/4000, Cap1 481/1800, Cap1 2251/2300, Cap 1 1457/1500, AMEX Delta Skymiles 2490/5000, Walmart 0/1000, JCPenney 79/1000, Chevron/Texaco 0/1000, Chase Slate 2894/3200 Wells Fargo Secured card 0/300
I was divorced in 2006 and my credit got trashed, got laid off in 2007 and it got trashed some more. Kind of a late decision but in June 2014 I opened a secured BofA and Wells Fargo Cards with $300 each. The BofA went unsecurd in 6 months while the Wells is still secured, but just got a letter that it is being upgraded in the next month - no idea what the new CL will be. I applied to the second BofA card in 2/2015 and was approved for $1000, and all of the other cards after that were preapprovals I received in the mail.
No bad stuff on my report since early 2015.
AAoA is 1 yr 8 months and oldest lines 2 1/2 years.8 inq on TU, 4 on EQ 1 on EX in the past 2 years but only 2 on TU, 1 on EX, and 1 on EQ in the past year. Total utilization right now at 47%. Newest lines are the AMEX and Chase cards, both opened June 2016. Most of the utilization comes from starting a side venture earlier this year, especially on the AMEX to get 50,000 skymiles. The side business makes me about $1000 - $1500/mo Gross profit and goes to paying my cards and savings. The Chase card balance is all 0% BT. Capital One sent me a letter in October offering 0% on any Balance transfers to my existing cards for 15 months so I transferred as much as I could, not realizing the impact of having three cards with very high Utilization.
So here is whats happening this month: After reading this board I hit the button on the Synch cards and now Walmart, Chevron and JCP all have $3000 limits. I also made a $1000 payment to AMEX, $200 each to the highst Cap 1 cards, $150 to Chase to bring down their utilization a bit regular $75 payments to the other cards with balances and paid off JCP.
That should help out a bit with Utilization, getting it to around 30% toatal when it gets reported next month. I'm also in the process of doing that Alliant secured loan, and waiting for some documents with the account number to come in the mail so I can fund it.
All in all there should be a pretty good jump next month, hopefully over 700 for all. Income is $76k/yr. I plan to transfer all remaining balances paying interest to the 0% cards and then take advantage of the rewards, paying my personal charges each month and letting the business pay down the 0% balances. Anyone have any thoughts or advice on applying to all 4 at once? Is there an order I should follow if any of these more sensitive to inquiries than others?
Thanks!
