how strict are BofA's new rules?

[Anonymous]

The reason why people suggest gardening is to prevent you from triggering a cascade of card closures. Lenders get really spooked when a thin file adds a lot of cards in a short time. 

Something that gets missed when looking at people's signatures is how thick they were before they went on a spree. I am a perfect example of this. I started this journey with just 3 cards last year and a total of $9250 in limits between them. I closed two cards and kept my QS and I have added every other card in my signature since March of last year, growing to 20 cards with $100,250 in total limits. This seems impossible and it looks like I have done this with a thin file but I have student loans going back to 2010 on my reports, including multiple transfers, and my oldest card is from 3/2014 as well. My AAoA is still 2 years on my thinnest file and 2y6m on my thickest despite my spree behavior. There is also still no guarantee that I won't lose some accounts when everything reports. 

If you are okay with the possibility of ending up losing accounts and not being able to get another one from that lender for some time and you don't have any lenders on your radar that are sensitive to credit seeking, getting it out of your system now could be beneficial later. Just beware that you could trigger a cascade of closures and other AA. 

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

i have seen some forum members here that started from scratch and apped 15 cards without a long garden stretch. they got good limits that grew, and their scores grew fast too.

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I don't have an opinion one way or the other on whether you should apply for the cards you want.  But can you point to an example of what you stated in the highlighted portion of your earlier comment?

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this is a good example:

7/18 auto loan

(garden 1 mo)
9/18 barclay apple $700
9/18 cap1 quicksilver $600

(garden 6 mo)
5/19 macys store only card $500 -> $3,000

6/19 apple card $5,000

7/19 citi costco visa $4,000 -> $7,000
7/19 amex bce $15,000
7/19 disco student chrome $1,000

8/19 becu visa $7,500 -> $20,000
8/19 amazon store card $3,100
8/19 gap visa card $1,500
8/19 becu cloc $10,000

(garden 1 mo)
10/19 citi dc $3,800

TU742, EQ708, EX697
CL:65.7K

[Anonymous]

What were the age factors in that person’s account?

[Anonymous]

what do you mean by age factors? what kind of info are you looking for.

[Anonymous]

Age of youngest and oldest accounts, and average age of accounts.

[Anonymous]

i included all the dates, its easy to get those factors with a calculator. the person is only 19 years old so i don't think he has any more history than this.

[Anonymous]

Can you post a direct link to the post/thread that information came from?  Also I personally don't consider $500 - $1,000 limits as "good" limits.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

i included all the dates, its easy to get those factors with a calculator. the person is only 19 years old so i don't think he has any more history than this.

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Its possible that the person could been an authorized user or one or several cards to give their credit age factors a boost.

[Anonymous]

^^^ that. I made my two older kids AUs on my Amex and QS accounts when they were 15 and 14. At 19, they’d have age factors of several years already.

[CreditInspired]

In order to get back on topic, OP have you decided whether or not you’re going to apply for the BOA CC based on their new rule?