topic Re: First post, need some advice. in Credit Cards

First post, need some advice.

Anonymous — Sun, 05 Oct 2014 22:05:17 GMT

My first post, hopefully this is in the right spot. I'm coming up on my one year MS anniversary and need to think about closing some cards, and maybe using my decent credit scores to open some new credit lines. Here's the relevant info I can think of:

1. Current credit estimates are scores of 838 on CS and 778 on CK.
2. My wife and I have a two year old daughter and a new one on the way; our traveling future looks very dim. I have 200k UR points and 125k avios gathering dust.
3. My current cards are: CSP, Freedom, Ink Plus, Chase British Airways, Barclays Arrival, Amex Old Blue.
4. My credit is basically maxed with Chase, I had to transfer credit lines to open up my last Chase card.
5. I use my Old Blue to buy gcs and essentially earn 5% on all daily spending. My other cards are sock drawered.

My plan:

1. Transfer points from CSP to Ink Plus. Close CSP and BA cards to avoid AFs and to free up credit with Chase.
2. Close the Arrival card to dodge AF.

My questions:
1. We are planning on buying a new car in the next couple of months, and a second car next year. Do I avoid signing up for new cards until we secure an auto loan?
2. Since I'm focusing and getting essentially 5% cb, and don't use FF miles with any regularity, should I even bother looking at churnable cards? I will need the miles one day, but should i stockpile knowing there will likely be devaluations? Or just focus on CB?
3. If you advise to look at new cards, I'm thinking about going for the Discover It and Citi Double Cash cards, for AF free building of long term credit. My current longest credit card is 14ish years, another store card is two years, and the other six are only a year of age. I need some more aging credit, right?

If you read all of this and are patient enough to give advice, my sincere thanks to you!

Re: First post, need some advice.

jsucool76 — Mon, 06 Oct 2014 04:11:56 GMT

First of all, Welcome to MyFico.

1. I would avoid signing up for new cards if you plan on buying a car, especially if you don't need them.

2. If you're not going to use miles, focus on cash back. You have a lot of points, you could probably take a nice little vacation somewhere for free. Just gotta join some programs. If you have a plan to use your points, then look into churnable cards, and try to stay loyal to 2 programs, one airline, one hotel to maximize earnings. Churning is becoming more and more difficult as of late though.

3. When you're ready to apply for new credit (I'd wait till after auto loans) the discover it is great for the 5% categories, and the DC is great for the 2% cash back on all purchases, but you don't want this to interfere with your blue cash spending, as you earn 5% on most purchases with that card.

Hope this helps.

Re: First post, need some advice.

red259 — Mon, 06 Oct 2014 04:37:27 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
My first post, hopefully this is in the right spot. I'm coming up on my one year MS anniversary and need to think about closing some cards, and maybe using my decent credit scores to open some new credit lines. Here's the relevant info I can think of:

1. Current credit estimates are scores of 838 on CS and 778 on CK.
2. My wife and I have a two year old daughter and a new one on the way; our traveling future looks very dim. I have 200k UR points and 125k avios gathering dust.
3. My current cards are: CSP, Freedom, Ink Plus, Chase British Airways, Barclays Arrival, Amex Old Blue.
4. My credit is basically maxed with Chase, I had to transfer credit lines to open up my last Chase card.
5. I use my Old Blue to buy gcs and essentially earn 5% on all daily spending. My other cards are sock drawered.

My plan:
1. Transfer points from CSP to Ink Plus. Close CSP and BA cards to avoid AFs and to free up credit with Chase.
2. Close the Arrival card to dodge AF.

My questions:
1. We are planning on buying a new car in the next couple of months, and a second car next year. Do I avoid signing up for new cards until we secure an auto loan?
2. Since I'm focusing and getting essentially 5% cb, and don't use FF miles with any regularity, should I even bother looking at churnable cards? I will need the miles one day, but should i stockpile knowing there will likely be devaluations? Or just focus on CB?
3. If you advise to look at new cards, I'm thinking about going for the Discover It and Citi Double Cash cards, for AF free building of long term credit. My current longest credit card is 14ish years, another store card is two years, and the other six are only a year of age. I need some more aging credit, right?

If you read all of this and are patient enough to give advice, my sincere thanks to you!

Hi, welcome to the board. I would think with an auto loan coming up you would want to avoid new inqs until you have secured the financing etc (at least for the first car if your going to buy another car at the very end of next year you might be able to app for some cards in between). That way you have the best score going in and can get the best terms. Since you have the chase ink plus there is no need to keep the CSP as you correctly point out. What you may want to do is downgrade to the non-AF CS. That way you can keep the card for bonus on restaurant spend (the points from your freedom and CS can still be transferred to travel partners by your ink plus card). No need to keep the BA card open if your not going to be flying enough to offset the fee. Any chase cards you close you should see if you can move the CL to other cards to keep it available for future apps (keep in mind with time the cap on your credit with chase can increase).

If your not going to be doing any real travel in the next few years then you probably want to get rid of the barclay arrival plus card. I would call in and see if you can get an AF waiver or some sort of retention offer first, but if not then I would cancel. I think there is also a non-AF version of the arrival card and you could downgrade to that if you really wanted to keep the relationship ongoing with Barclays and just SD it, but it will remain on your profile for the next 10 years if you close it so I don't think it will be much of a loss. In terms of cards you can add I think the citi double cash is a nice pick for both building history and earning cash back. The Discover It card is good for diversity of lenders, no AF and rotating categories.

The final card I would consider would be the Amex ED. You can get backdating to the date of your blue card to help with your AAoAs. Its a travel card but its non-AF and the travel partners are decent. I would suggest you check the rules of each program you have points in to make sure you do what you need to make sure the points dont get forfeited due to inactivity,. Some programs require activity to keep the accounts open which can be as simple as moving a few points into the account to reset the clock.

Re: First post, need some advice.

B335is — Mon, 06 Oct 2014 04:46:22 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
My first post, hopefully this is in the right spot. I'm coming up on my one year MS anniversary and need to think about closing some cards, and maybe using my decent credit scores to open some new credit lines. Here's the relevant info I can think of:

1. Current credit estimates are scores of 838 on CS and 778 on CK.
2. My wife and I have a two year old daughter and a new one on the way; our traveling future looks very dim. I have 200k UR points and 125k avios gathering dust.
3. My current cards are: CSP, Freedom, Ink Plus, Chase British Airways, Barclays Arrival, Amex Old Blue.
4. My credit is basically maxed with Chase, I had to transfer credit lines to open up my last Chase card.
5. I use my Old Blue to buy gcs and essentially earn 5% on all daily spending. My other cards are sock drawered.

My plan:
1. Transfer points from CSP to Ink Plus. Close CSP and BA cards to avoid AFs and to free up credit with Chase.
2. Close the Arrival card to dodge AF.

My questions:
1. We are planning on buying a new car in the next couple of months, and a second car next year. Do I avoid signing up for new cards until we secure an auto loan?
2. Since I'm focusing and getting essentially 5% cb, and don't use FF miles with any regularity, should I even bother looking at churnable cards? I will need the miles one day, but should i stockpile knowing there will likely be devaluations? Or just focus on CB?
3. If you advise to look at new cards, I'm thinking about going for the Discover It and Citi Double Cash cards, for AF free building of long term credit. My current longest credit card is 14ish years, another store card is two years, and the other six are only a year of age. I need some more aging credit, right?

If you read all of this and are patient enough to give advice, my sincere thanks to you!

Welcome to the forum, great post.

I actually agree with your plan. If you aren't using CSP heavily and have the Ink Plus, you might as well close or transfer the CSP credit line to Freedom. Same with BA. Have you considered going for Ink Bold? I know there's tons of buzz about it being discontinued, but it's still a generous 50k UR points.

Close AF Arrival - good move after year 1.

On to your questions.

1) You may want to get your actual Fico's, but it sounds like you have excellent credit. BMW considers anything over 680 Dealer enhanced to be top tier. I doubt adding another card or two is really going to matter unless you max them out.

2) I think the next devalue will be American Airlines in 2015 - in particular the partner rewards. That's not to say I wouldn't jump at a good offer when I see one, but generally 50k bonus is considered good these days. Virgin Atlantic had a 90k offer recently, Alaska sometimes gets bumped to 50k - both have excellent transferability and are easily churned. I go for travel rewards more so than cash because it forces me to do something for myself, versus just applying cash back as statement credit. So decide how you want to rewards yourself first.

3) People generally love Discover (mine, however is behind the debit card in the kitchen drawer). The rotating 5% categories would probably work out well with your Freedom. It seems you're leaning more for the cash back option though, so look into Sallie Mae: 5% cash back on first $250 each - gas and groceries per month. US Bank Cash+ is another good card for picking two 5% categories.

Re: First post, need some advice.

takeshi74 — Mon, 06 Oct 2014 13:52:13 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
We are planning on buying a new car in the next couple of months, and a second car next year. Do I avoid signing up for new cards until we secure an auto loan?

General advice would be to avoid new credit if you want the most favorable terms on the auto loan. Even if you don't know the details you could think of it this way: Which is more important to you -- the auto loan or the miles you don't have any use for right now?

@Anonymous wrote:
I need some more aging credit, right?

I don't think you need to worry about it if you're ~800. AAoA is only 15%:

http://www.myfico.com/crediteducation/whatsinyourscore.aspx

I'm not saying go crazy with the new applications (consider that your loans will also drop your AAoA).

Re: First post, need some advice.

Anonymous — Mon, 06 Oct 2014 21:33:04 GMT

Thank you all for the input! Very friendly and helpful place to be

jsucool76- Thank you for the input and friendly welcome I'm going to hold off on applying for new cards until we secure the loan.

red259- I had considered downgrading to the regular CS from the CSP, however, when I opened up my most recent card with Chase, I had to transfer credit. My thought is, since I'm maxed with credit from them, to free it up by cancelling both the CSP and the BA card? I know lines can increase, but I've only had a year long relationship with Chase. I will DEFINITELY check out the Amex ED card. I have a joint card dating back to 2000, due to the fact that my parents opened an Amex card and put my name on it when I was in high school. So, I think to help my AAoA, I will open another Amex card, probably after securing the car loan.

B335is- I'm using my AMEX Old Blue to fund GCs that I use for all of my spending, so I basically get 5% on everything. The only reason I was looking at the DC and Discover It cards is because they are AF free and seemed like good cards to use to let age and increase my AAoA. It sounds like another Amex card might be a better option, as my oldest AMEX card is 12 to 13 years older than all of my other credit lines?

takeshi74- Point taken. I'm going to hold off until we have the car, it should be in the next month or so anyways.

Re: First post, need some advice.

red259 — Mon, 06 Oct 2014 23:53:15 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Thank you all for the input! Very friendly and helpful place to be

jsucool76- Thank you for the input and friendly welcome I'm going to hold off on applying for new cards until we secure the loan.

red259- I had considered downgrading to the regular CS from the CSP, however, when I opened up my most recent card with Chase, I had to transfer credit. My thought is, since I'm maxed with credit from them, to free it up by cancelling both the CSP and the BA card? I know lines can increase, but I've only had a year long relationship with Chase. I will DEFINITELY check out the Amex ED card. I have a joint card dating back to 2000, due to the fact that my parents opened an Amex card and put my name on it when I was in high school. So, I think to help my AAoA, I will open another Amex card, probably after securing the car loan.

B335is- I'm using my AMEX Old Blue to fund GCs that I use for all of my spending, so I basically get 5% on everything. The only reason I was looking at the DC and Discover It cards is because they are AF free and seemed like good cards to use to let age and increase my AAoA. It sounds like another Amex card might be a better option, as my oldest AMEX card is 12 to 13 years older than all of my other credit lines?

takeshi74- Point taken. I'm going to hold off until we have the car, it should be in the next month or so anyways.

I guess maybe by cancelling the cards you can have a better shot at an instant approval later. The BA card should definitely go. My thought process was with the CS that you get to keep the bonus for restaurant spend and by consolidating the credit lines you can just move credit around the next time you app in order to get new cards. There is no guarantee that they will give you another card with more credit next time and they could easily come back to you and ask if you want to move credit around, which is why I am usually wary of giving credit back with Chase especially when they are pretty good with recon and letting you move lines around.

Re: First post, need some advice.

Anonymous — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 02:46:09 GMT

My utilization of Chase cards is minimal, barely anything at all. If I don't get instant approval, there's no way I would call recon at this point. I've got four cards and use less than $500 on average. I use my Old Blue to get 5% back everywhere, so restaurants wouldn't be a reason to keep CS imo.

Re: First post, need some advice.

Kenny — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 03:37:51 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
My utilization of Chase cards is minimal, barely anything at all. If I don't get instant approval, there's no way I would call recon at this point. I've got four cards and use less than $500 on average. I use my Old Blue to get 5% back everywhere, so restaurants wouldn't be a reason to keep CS imo.

I agree with everything you said except the not calling for recon on the Ink Bold if you go for it. 200k UR is awesome and 250k UR is even better. I'd close any AF card that you have that will be hitting soon if you have no need for them. As the old blue doesn't have an AF and is obviously making your life a great 5% cb on daily spend. A lot of times with scores like you have (even the FAKO should indicate you have excellent credit.. you don't just get the cards with the limits that you've gotten without having excellent credit.) if you don't get instant approval it's usually just verifying that you actually meant to app for it and it wasn't some fluke.

Re: First post, need some advice.

Anonymous — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 03:43:24 GMT

I just don't know how i would justify to them needing the Ink Bold after having four cards with minimal utilization. And I'm kinda scared of getting the same CSR one of my friends did after I told him to call... He got absolutely grilled and destroyed, even after I had prepped him. Don't want all my spending habits questioned, if that makes sense.

Re: First post, need some advice.

B335is — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 04:04:07 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I just don't know how i would justify to them needing the Ink Bold after having four cards with minimal utilization. And I'm kinda scared of getting the same CSR one of my friends did after I told him to call... He got absolutely grilled and destroyed, even after I had prepped him. Don't want all my spending habits questioned, if that makes sense.

You could take my approach and wait it out. I think you'd be ok, you already have business history with Chase on your Plus. I'd seriously consider going for the Bold now - once it's gone, that's it, ship sailed.

Re: First post, need some advice.

Anonymous — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 20:34:18 GMT

Ok. I'm gonna cancel my BA and CSP today. How long should I wait before applying for the Bold after cancelling? I won't apply for anything else until we have secured our car loan. Since I know as of earlier this year my credit was maxed with them, I want to make sure it registers that I have reduced my open lines with them.

Re: First post, need some advice.

B335is — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 21:15:37 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Ok. I'm gonna cancel my BA and CSP today. How long should I wait before applying for the Bold after cancelling? I won't apply for anything else until we have secured our car loan. Since I know as of earlier this year my credit was maxed with them, I want to make sure it registers that I have reduced my open lines with them.

How long has it been since your last Chase approval? I've heard they try to limit approving more than 2 new cards every 6 months, but that

is most likely YMMV. Another option before you cancel CSP and BA is apply for Bold and if you need to ask for recon, use those limits as leverage to get it approved. Either way, Chase's systems seem to reflect any overall changes almost immediately.

Re: First post, need some advice.

Anonymous — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 21:58:24 GMT

Based on statements (I'm not at home to confirm), it looks like:

Ink Plus 01/27/2014

BA 12/29/2013

CSP 11/30/2013

Freedom 11/24/2013

Bumbled my way through four approvals in two months...

Re: First post, need some advice.

B335is — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 23:47:03 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Based on statements (I'm not at home to confirm), it looks like:

Ink Plus 01/27/2014
BA 12/29/2013
CSP 11/30/2013
Freedom 11/24/2013

Bumbled my way through four approvals in two months...

Ok you blew that 2 cards every 6 months rumor out of the water. You may want to do a little searching on how often you can apply for Chase Business cards, but you're over 8 months out, shouldn't be an issue.

Re: First post, need some advice.

Anonymous — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 23:59:25 GMT

If you go strictly cash back: Unless you know some trick that I don't (always possible) you are getting more like 4% on BC after debit card fees, so I would focus on 5% cards for areas you spend that aren't directly covered by BC. Sallie Mae was mentioned, but that only makes sense for bookstores, another choice is US Bank Cash Plus which allows the selection of 2 5% categories. Of course, the gains are small because Cash + is capped at $2000 spend per quarter, so we are talking about $80 a year over your existing method, but that's better than the Double Cash you mentioned.

You can also get the Discover and Freedom, but with rotating categories it becomes a gamble, and one of the more useful categories, gas, is already covered by BC.

So my strategy is currently US Bank Cash Plus, for vet and cell phone, Citi 5x Forward for dining and bookstores/Amazon, and BC, directly or indirectly for everything else.

Re: First post, need some advice.

Luscher — Wed, 08 Oct 2014 00:31:06 GMT

Make sure you transfer the credit limit on your chase cards, you don't want to lose that. and 200k ur points is 2000 dollars, and even more if you choose to use it for a vacation or airfare!

Re: First post, need some advice.

Anonymous — Wed, 08 Oct 2014 03:19:36 GMT

Well, I ended up cancelling my BA card this afternoon. Can someone help me understand credit limits? My understanding was that once you hit your max with a company, i.e. 100k with Chase, your best bet was to cancel a card to free up some of your total "pool"? My last card required me calling and OKing moving 8k to the new card.... I figured that meant i was maxed and it was time to free up space? I really don't want to have to call and bring potential attention to my MS everytime i apply for a new card with them...

Re: First post, need some advice.

Anonymous — Wed, 08 Oct 2014 03:31:42 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Well, I ended up cancelling my BA card this afternoon. Can someone help me understand credit limits? My understanding was that once you hit your max with a company, i.e. 100k with Chase, your best bet was to cancel a card to free up some of your total "pool"? My last card required me calling and OKing moving 8k to the new card.... I figured that meant i was maxed and it was time to free up space? I really don't want to have to call and bring potential attention to my MS everytime i apply for a new card with them...

To avoid attention, that might be best. The other school of thought is to have at least one card with the issuer so that you can offer to partially transfer a CL to the new card if at first declined. If you are doing MS on Chase, in this climate I would cancel and hope for instant approval on any new card.

Re: First post, need some advice.

Anonymous — Wed, 08 Oct 2014 03:37:29 GMT

That was my hope; the prayer for the instant approval. My BA card had a $20k limit... I wonder if I should just say a prayer and shoot for the Bold at this point.