@crunching_numbers wrote:
@pizzadude wrote:When a creditor pulls your credit, the inquiry will in most cases show immediately on your credit reports. Also the FICO score pulled after the inquiry would reflect the new inquiry.
In terms of FICO scoring, auto or mortgage inquiries within a certain window will only be counted as a single inquiry. All other inquiries are always scored individually.
The exact auto/mortgage inquiry scoring windows vary from 14 - 45 days depending on the FICO version that is used.
Pizzadude: Could you clarify something for me? Do you mean that the FICO that shows up on the letter you get with a new card already includes the hit you took for applying for that card? In other words, that is WITH the new inq? Or were you saying that if I go apply for a second card, the inq from the first card is there?
That 
To be more precise, the score you receive from an application letter does not include the new inquiry. The pull happens, your report is evaluated to produce a score, and subsequently an inquiry is logged against your report.
Any future pulls of that individual CRA's report, will include that inquiry ,and your score at that time will reflect it as a result.
To the OP's question:
Personally I recommend clustering credit applications in addition to the usual auto / mortgage you absolutely should.
Not only do inquiries count against you, but new tradelines do as well, and generally there's at least a week or two before a new tradeline reports (up to around 2 months even). This is a flag for two reasons, first, a hit to your AAoA, and secondly, it's likely to be on all three reports, whereas a standard credit card application usually only pulls one report, and only logs one inquiry against that particular report (some lenders / situations vary).
Even with the same report being pulled, your chances are still higher for approval than an inquiry + new tradeline, and if your second (or third) application pulls a different report, you don't have any penalty at all.
That's the instant-in-time snapshot, but the key component of FICO scoring (for just about anything outside of revolving utilization which everyone seems to focus on exclusively) is positive payment history over time. If you know you want a tradeline, get it open ASAP to get the benefits of increased age, increased payment history, and also to get the inquiry / new tradeline damage out of the way and healing immediately. As a result, unless you're gold-plated with most of the tradelines you want anyway, it usually behooves you to simply open them all at once when you decide to start or upgrade your credit card collection. This is assuming you're not going for anything ridiculous, such as my applying for a Chase Sapphire Preferred... i.e. something you can actually be approved for.
The only caveat to that is if you're looking at a run up to a mortgage in the 0-6, or maybe even 0-12 month range: wait till after closing to apply for anything else.
