topic Re: Preparing to apply for all my credit cards :D in Credit Cards

Preparing to apply for all my credit cards :D

Azza — Sat, 01 Apr 2017 04:15:07 GMT

Hey all. I currently have a game plan to acquire three new credit cards. Currently the only one I have is a Discover It. It's really bland.

Following up on a thread I wrote recently, here is what I'm thinking of going for:

Citi Costco Card - 4% Gas, 3% Restaurant and Travel, 2% at Costco
Amex Blue Cash Pref - 6% on Shopping
Discover It - 5% Rotating
Blispay - 2% everything! (Would consider another premium 2% cash back card in its place!)

My wife and I don't do a ton of traveling. We're mostly homebodies. I believe my wife has an Amazon card, but we don't use it that often. Anyway, trying to cover as many bases as possible. Dining, groceries and gas are my biggest spends, with occasional everyday spending. We have a Costco membership.

I could receive a Chase card, I believe I am at 2/24 right now (for revolving). I have a Newegg store card (Synchrony) and a credit union credit card.

I am okay with annual fees if they will cover themselves and give greater than 2% effective cash back.

Today my scores are 718 EQ, 749 TU 709 EX. Jump expected tomorrow, but assume my credit is between 700-750.

Thanks for advice!

Re: Preparing to apply for all my credit cards :D

Anonymous — Sat, 01 Apr 2017 04:40:43 GMT

Discover is worth tending to. Chase is worth getting in with. Your other choices look good, except Blispay seems to have a bad track record with customer service, I'd put something else in it's place. I'd put Citi first on the list of apps since they are more inq sensitive than others.

Re: Preparing to apply for all my credit cards :D

Anonymous — Sat, 01 Apr 2017 05:04:50 GMT

you would still be foolish to not consider the chase cards even if u dont travel. You are giving away thousands of dollars, well, forfeiting by not considering them. I would be getting the CSP, CSR, Ink Preferred, stuff like that first. pay in full. Then once u have hit 5 cards in 2 years between each of you, then move on to the others like amex, etc.

I mean not manyother cards would give you $800 cash for spending 5k.......

Re: Preparing to apply for all my credit cards :D

Creditplz — Sat, 01 Apr 2017 05:07:22 GMT

Jfriend I completely agree, I'd get chase cards under the 5/24. Then go to Citi.

Re: Preparing to apply for all my credit cards :D

Azza — Sat, 01 Apr 2017 05:44:38 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
you would still be foolish to not consider the chase cards even if u dont travel. You are giving away thousands of dollars, well, forfeiting by not considering them. I would be getting the CSP, CSR, Ink Preferred, stuff like that first. pay in full. Then once u have hit 5 cards in 2 years between each of you, then move on to the others like amex, etc.

I mean not manyother cards would give you $800 cash for spending 5k.......

Hey thanks for this advice. Can you please share which card would be the best for me? We bring in about $4000 a month together. Of that about $1300 is rent/electric. $400 car payment, $460 more in bills, $150 max in gas. $400 to tithe and $600 goes to savings. That's all of our must-have spending, leaving us with about $500-700 in discretionary spending including all food. We're wild with our food spending. Some months we spend a lot and some months we spend less. I've spent as much as $500 on groceries and as little as $200, and restaurants of course also swing around in there.

Re: Preparing to apply for all my credit cards :D

Anonymous — Sat, 01 Apr 2017 05:51:00 GMT

I'd say CSP. If you dont fly often then the airline credit on CSR wont be used to cut down on that $450 AF.

Re: Preparing to apply for all my credit cards :D

Anonymous — Sat, 01 Apr 2017 06:06:00 GMT

@Azza wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
you would still be foolish to not consider the chase cards even if u dont travel. You are giving away thousands of dollars, well, forfeiting by not considering them. I would be getting the CSP, CSR, Ink Preferred, stuff like that first. pay in full. Then once u have hit 5 cards in 2 years between each of you, then move on to the others like amex, etc.

I mean not manyother cards would give you $800 cash for spending 5k.......
Hey thanks for this advice. Can you please share which card would be the best for me? We bring in about $4000 a month together. Of that about $1300 is rent/electric. $400 car payment, $460 more in bills, $150 max in gas. $400 to tithe and $600 goes to savings. That's all of our must-have spending, leaving us with about $500-700 in discretionary spending including all food. We're wild with our food spending. Some months we spend a lot and some months we spend less. I've spent as much as $500 on groceries and as little as $200, and restaurants of course also swing around in there.

first of all you should not be tithing 10% of your gross income unless you have 5+ years of emergency funds built up or more. Unless this is some type of mandatory thing for a childs education or something. But you are spending $4800 a year to help other people when you really could be bettering yourself. Start couponing and get a stash going and dontate physical free stuff that way instead of handing out your hard earned cash. 10pct of your gross income..... yowza you are generous!!!!

The 600 going to savings should really be 1000 and that should be in your high yield checking account earning 2,3, 5% APY. Credit union or small town bank. Your best bet is going to keep your credit cards separate. Do not apply jointly or add each other as authorized users (Unless its temporary, not amex, and is for a bonus)

I would go to doctorofcredit.com and read every post there you can. FInd the checking account bonus offers that you can qualify for based on where you live. With two people you should always be working on a card with minimum spend. Generally speaking the good cards are 2-5k spend in 90 days to qualify for the bonus. You can use services to cut a check to pay your rent, (but you should see if perhaps your place does already take CC's for a small fee, if so you are golden). If you had no credit card debt, you could start off one person getting 2 cards, and then every 4-6 months alternate. Goal is to keep your scores above 700 and even higher if you ever are going to get a mortgage.

I would also advocate you get into couponing totallytarget.com if you shop at target, krazycouponlady, slickdeals for random deals, etc. Just to save money. Please do not take offense to my wording, in no way shape or form and I insinuating that 48k a year is low income. I just hope you are not carrying any existing debt. If so that needs to be addressed first with a plan to snowball and do some 0% balance transfers.

It is also still nice to have some general spend cards in the event you are NOT working on a bonus to use that will maximize your return. Check the link in my signature by themanwhocan he has cashback charts that will be a good starting point on what is the best fit. First card that comes to mind is alliant 3% http://www.alliantcreditunion.org/bank/visa-signature-card and use that whenever you are not in a category like gas, dining, groceries. Also, not sure how much you have saved up, but if you do like to take any trips at all. You would get more return on some cards when redeeming for travel, paired with a few checking account bonuses, that can be a nice free trip. Blisspay is another good one, usaa limitless is good.

Whatever you do, dont bank somewhere that is only giving you 0.05 or 1% for your savings account. Heck my primary checking account pays me 5% on up to 5k, and lets me have two! My secondary pays 2.25%.

What are each of your 3 scores, where are they from, what is your average age of accounts, what is your total credit available, your utilization, and number of inquiries? Just out of curiousity?

Re: Preparing to apply for all my credit cards :D

celluloid17 — Sat, 01 Apr 2017 06:07:35 GMT

Since you're not travel oriented at the moment, maybe you should go for the Chase Freedom Unlimited as your general spend card. It's 1.5% back instead of 2%, but can be much more valuable if you ever did plan to travel, at which point you could apply for the CSP and pair the Chase FU with it.

If you got the Citi Costco Anywhere card (which covers so much!), the American Express BCP (with sign-up bonus, including 6 months of 10% cash back at restaurants), the Freedom Unlimited (also with sign-up bonus), coupled with your Discover you'd be set.

Re: Preparing to apply for all my credit cards :D

Anonymous — Sat, 01 Apr 2017 06:13:02 GMT

@celluloid17 wrote:
Since you're not travel oriented at the moment, maybe you should go for the Chase Freedom Unlimited as your general spend card. It's 1.5% back instead of 2%, but can be much more valuable if you ever did plan to travel, at which point you could apply for the CSP and pair the Chase FU with it.

If you got the Citi Costco Anywhere card (which covers so much!), the American Express BCP (with sign-up bonus, including 6 months of 10% cash back at restaurants), the Freedom Unlimited (also with sign-up bonus), coupled with your Discover you'd be set.

even if you do not travel you should still consider the amount of the bonus, and downgrade the card later

Re: Preparing to apply for all my credit cards :D

Azza — Sat, 01 Apr 2017 06:47:38 GMT

MyFico report from 2/24/17 and 3B monitoring. I'll be doing a full report refresh probably Monday or Tuesday before I start applying.

No late payments, no collections.

1 installment loan (car loan) with about 68% left.

AAoA is about 3.5 years.

Inquiries are between 5-8 depending on bureau.

TL of revolving is $6000. I am an AU on my wife's Discover It with a $7000 line. It apparently shows up in my reports.

Current Util is about 8-11% depending on when my credit union reports... The scores posted in the OP are at about a 20-30% Util.

That Alliant card LOOKS INCREDIBLE. I'm definitely going to make a donation and try to apply for that card.

Re: Preparing to apply for all my credit cards :D

Anonymous — Sat, 01 Apr 2017 06:49:57 GMT

@Azza wrote:
MyFico.

No late payments, no collections.

AAoA is about 3.5 years.

Inquiries are between 5-8 depending on bureau.

TL of revolving is $6000. I am an AU on my wife's Discover It with a $7000 line. It apparently shows up in my reports.

Current Util is about 8-11% depending on when my credit union reports... The scores posted in the OP are at about a 20-30% Util.

That Alliant card LOOKS INCREDIBLE. I'm definitely going to make a donation and try to apply for that card.

aaoa is great. inqs are ok. Do you guys pay interest? I think you need to have at least a savings account first to apply for the card, especially since its not been officially released yet. Then the 2nd year you can PC it to something else. I also think in this economy and with your income it would not be a bad idea to have a single digit fixed rate interest card that has no balance transfer and hopefully low/no cash advance fees. Get some checking account bonuses!!!!!!!!!

Re: Preparing to apply for all my credit cards :D

Azza — Sat, 01 Apr 2017 06:56:07 GMT

Yeah our current credit union offers 2% APY (Rivermark). We're paying some interest on the Discover It but we're going to have that paid off 100% in July. The only other interest is on the car loan, but we want to accelerate payments on that to clear our debt asap

I guess I'll have to research the Alliant some more. So I'll need to learn more about the Chase bonuses, because everybody talks about the big fat intro rewards but I'm in this for the longer haul, not so much the churning.

So would you suggest applying for: Citi, Amex, Alliant in that order...? Or what would you suggest? I'm just trying to find the right mix with the most yearly benefit. I feel if I do this right I could *potentially* see $2000 a year in cash back, including my bank interest.

Re: Preparing to apply for all my credit cards :D

Anonymous — Sat, 01 Apr 2017 21:25:18 GMT

@Azza wrote:
Yeah our current credit union offers 2% APY (Rivermark). We're paying some interest on the Discover It but we're going to have that paid off 100% in July. The only other interest is on the car loan, but we want to accelerate payments on that to clear our debt asap

I guess I'll have to research the Alliant some more. So I'll need to learn more about the Chase bonuses, because everybody talks about the big fat intro rewards but I'm in this for the longer haul, not so much the churning.

So would you suggest applying for: Citi, Amex, Alliant in that order...? Or what would you suggest? I'm just trying to find the right mix with the most yearly benefit. I feel if I do this right I could *potentially* see $2000 a year in cash back, including my bank interest.

Ask for apr reduction on discover.

Chase first. You will get exponentially more than 3 percent cash back. Example. Ink preferred Spend 5k get 800. That's 16 percent cash back. Chase sapphire preferred spend 4k get 500 that's 12.5. American Express Blue cash preferred if you spent 6k in groceries you'd get 360.....

Alliant you should get a savings account now. If you have no car loans look into shared secure loan technique here. Then few mos go for card. The best deal would be to get their 400 bonus rewards cc. Then pc to new 3pct card and year 2 something with no annual fee.

Amex is last they are easiest.

Why do you donate 10 pct of your income? Do you have a huge amount already saved up and you're in retirement?

Re: Preparing to apply for all my credit cards :D

Anonymous — Sat, 01 Apr 2017 21:34:24 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Why do you donate 10 pct of your income? Do you have a huge amount already saved up and you're in retirement?

When people use the term "tithe", they are referring to donations to a religious organization, which is often mandatory or at least highly expected. LDS is probably the church most well-known for mandatory tithing, but there are many other sects (usually Protestant or nondenominational) that do as well. The traditional amount of a tithe is 10%.

Re: Preparing to apply for all my credit cards :D

NRB525 — Sat, 01 Apr 2017 21:52:11 GMT

@Azza wrote:
Yeah our current credit union offers 2% APY (Rivermark). We're paying some interest on the Discover It but we're going to have that paid off 100% in July. The only other interest is on the car loan, but we want to accelerate payments on that to clear our debt asap

I guess I'll have to research the Alliant some more. So I'll need to learn more about the Chase bonuses, because everybody talks about the big fat intro rewards but I'm in this for the longer haul, not so much the churning.

So would you suggest applying for: Citi, Amex, Alliant in that order...? Or what would you suggest? I'm just trying to find the right mix with the most yearly benefit. I feel if I do this right I could *potentially* see $2000 a year in cash back, including my bank interest.

Just get the Citi Costco card for now, and then stop. Get used to that card, and consider other cards if you need to, but with your spend level and spend profile, it is unlkely you will get real value, a noticeable difference in return from spend, out of other cards.

The CSR is interesting of course, but you are far from the 5/24 limit so there's no rush to get it. The CSR also hits you up front with the $450 fee. Granted, some of that comes back if you spend on travel, but you have to spend on travel to get it back