topic Re: Is it time to prune and garden? in Credit Cards

Is it time to prune and garden?

jdxprs1 — Wed, 07 Jun 2017 01:30:00 GMT

Here's my current profile.

Mortgage
3 auto loans
Credit union dom 1750 limit 18% 14 years old no af
Merrick bank $550 17% no af. Doubles to $1100 soon.
Credit one $700 16% $39 af
Cerulean MasterCard $750 $10 per month af.
PayPal extras mc $5,000 27% no af
Amex ed $1,000 no af. Currently 0%
Amex bce $1,000 no af. Currently 0%
Walmart store card. $3,200 no af.
Pnc cash builder $5,000 no af. 22%
Nfcu sig cash $24,000 11.4%

I don't carry balances so interest rates aren't a big deal. Would use nfcu if I did need to carry a balance. I'd love to add discover, either Amex or citi Hilton, and citi double cash but I've had no luck getting them. Current fico 8's are TU 676, eq 692, ex 706.

Where would you go from here?

Re: Is it time to prune and garden?

medicgrrl — Wed, 07 Jun 2017 01:33:16 GMT

To the garden? Just kidding...you say you want to add Amex but you've got 2?

Re: Is it time to prune and garden?

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Jun 2017 01:39:25 GMT

Kill these two with fire:

Credit one $700 16% $39 af
Cerulean MasterCard $750 $10 per month af.

These are both below sub-prime cards. Just call, close them out, watch for a few months to make sure they don't report any new balances or fees and burn the cards with hellfire.

Now, what's your total and individual utilization like? If your utilization is high on any one card or many cards, getting that way down can help boost your scores and get you approved for better cards you want!

Re: Is it time to prune and garden?

jdxprs1 — Wed, 07 Jun 2017 01:40:34 GMT

I want a Hilton card. Don't care if it's citi or Amex. And I know the citi appears to be ending.

Re: Is it time to prune and garden?

jdxprs1 — Wed, 07 Jun 2017 01:41:42 GMT

Current utilization is like 1%. A small balance that slips by statement cut date is all I ever carry.

Re: Is it time to prune and garden?

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Jun 2017 01:46:01 GMT

@jdxprs1 wrote:
Current utilization is like 1%. A small balance that slips by statement cut date is all I ever carry.

That is perfect! FICO is maximized by allow a small balance (greater than $0, less than 9% of limit) reporting on one card so you're perfect there.

You also have an installment loan open and reporting, so that's good.

I'd say prune down some cards and age a bit more. What's your current AAOA this month? Are you close to the next full year AAOA?

Re: Is it time to prune and garden?

jdxprs1 — Wed, 07 Jun 2017 01:54:06 GMT

Aaoa took a big hit in last 6 months. Went from 8 or 9 years down to 2.8-3.2 depending on report.

Re: Is it time to prune and garden?

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Jun 2017 01:59:32 GMT

Yeah, that's pretty young but thanksfully not under 12 months! I went from 11 years AAoA with only bad accounts (lol) to 5.7 years AAoA when one account that was missing (good because it was all baddies) re-reported as all positive (goodwill letters) to to 3 years with a new account to 12 months all in the last 120 days, haha.

Age until you're at 3 years across the board, and then re-calculate what ONE new account will do to your AAoA and wait on applying until a new account doesn't bring you down below 3 years across the board.

Re: Is it time to prune and garden?

jdxprs1 — Wed, 07 Jun 2017 15:08:29 GMT

How big a deal is aaoa?

Re: Is it time to prune and garden?

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Jun 2017 15:12:33 GMT

According to FICO's many patents (if you want to read them all!), AAoA is one of the biggest factors in how you're placed in a scorecard. Derogatories versus no derogatories is THE biggest factor of course, but assuming an otherwise clean profile, AAoA is the big deal.

After 5 years and 8 months (I believe, I don't have it written down), you are in the best AAoA scorecard at that point. If you are under that, you are in a less positive score card and your FICO score won't be able to go above a given ceiling.

So the lower your AAoA, the lower your maximum score likely can be, even if everything else is perfect.

FICO also considers oldest account and newest account age, but AAoA is the generalizer to allow people with high FICOs to keep high FICOs as long as their overall average age isn't really low.

If I wanted to add a new account but it would lower my AAoA into the next lower year, I would just wait it out until my math told me I won't drop into a lower AAoA scorecard.

Re: Is it time to prune and garden?

Kforce — Wed, 07 Jun 2017 16:38:46 GMT

Pay off and close all cards that have AF.

Garden for a year

Re: Is it time to prune and garden?

austinguy907 — Wed, 07 Jun 2017 18:47:57 GMT

Credit union dom 1750 limit 18% 14 years old no af
~~Merrick bank $550 17% no af. Doubles to $1100 soon.~~
~~Credit one $700 16% $39 af~~
~~Cerulean MasterCard $750 $10 per month af.~~
PayPal extras mc $5,000 27% no af
Amex ed $1,000 no af. Currently 0%
Amex bce $1,000 no af. Currently 0%
Walmart store card. $3,200 no af.
Pnc cash builder $5,000 no af. 22%
Nfcu sig cash $24,000 11.4%

From my point of view I would close the above accounts due to being predatory.

Next up would be hitting up your CU that's 14 years old for a CLI and an APR reduction since you should really be around 6-10% on that with that sort of age.

Hilton..... I would just hold off on it until you can bring up your AMEX CL's. I would pick one of them and move the 1K over to the one you want to keep and be vigilent on hitting the 3X CLI schedule to boost them up over 10K before considering another AMEX.

Ping CS for the WM card and ask for 25K on it and see what they counter at. The more cards you have with higher limits the better chances of moving up the ladder quicker when you get to the point of being able to add another card to the mix.

I would also NOT APPLY for anything else until these have all aged at least a year if not 2 years. There's no rush in this game called credit. With your NFCU at 24K you should be able to leverage your other account CL's upwards w/o much effort other than not adding more accounts, letting time pass, and being persistent with asking them for CLI's on a shedule.

Re: Is it time to prune and garden?

jdxprs1 — Wed, 07 Jun 2017 20:00:16 GMT

The credit union is conservative. Everything is a hp with them.

Re: Is it time to prune and garden?

austinguy907 — Wed, 07 Jun 2017 20:56:06 GMT

99.99% of CU's are a HP for pretty much everything they offer.

Get over the hurdle of the HP issue and ask them for a CLI and APR reduction.

I have 4 different CU accounts and they all pretty much started out where you're at right now still 14 years later.

I opened one and it started out at 5K. I then decided I needed something with MC on it and got another one from them for 10K. APR at the time was 11.9 or somewhere around there. They provide a sliding scale on APR as your score goes up. So, a year or so I decided to combine them into a 15K card and tried my luck on the APR and got it dropped down to 6.9%.

Another CU opened at 10K and 9.9%. Gave me an auto CLI for $1K after the first year and then a couple of years later when I felt like it was time for them to make a move I asked for the CLI and they bumped it to 29K.

So, now that you have NFCU @ 24K and some rediculous low rate it makes sense to just ask for better terms and more spending power instead of killing your scores with all of the apps that will drop you from a Tier 2 to a Tier 4 in a matter of a couple of apps and then have to sit on the bench for a couple of years before getting back to where you started.