@Sharaby86 wrote:
Hi I'm trying to apply for the American Express BCE card and wonder if I would get approved. My credit score on all three TN, Eq, Ex show 723.
It's never just about score but if you want to know where you stand score-wise with a given product then you need to know the scoring model & CRA used in the decision for that product and then go pull that score. Scores based on other models and/or other CRA's will not be relevant in the creditor's decision. You can use tools such as the Credit Pulls Database (Google to find) and existing threads to research this stuff.
What are the model(s) for the scores you mention? IIRC, AmEx uses an Experian FICO 8.
@Sharaby86 wrote:
I have no collections, no BK's, no debt - clear
That's good but you have 4 new accounts and that's a fair bit of new credit which is a consideration as well.
@Sharaby86 wrote:
For my discover card I have 950 dollar balance out of 3000 I'm paying off purposely not in full to build my credit more.
You never need to carry a balance on a revolving account for scoring purposes or to build credit. It sounds like you're confusing carrying a balance with allowing a balance to report. You don't want all of your revolving accounts to report 0 balances as there is a hit for that. However, you can pay every statement balance in full and a balance will report. Whether a balance reports or not is a matter of when you pay versus the report date. Most cards report on statement date. If you wait for the statement to generate and pay the statement balance in full by the due date then the statement balance would have reported on the statement date and your payment would not impact the reported balance.
From a revolving utilziation perspective, 950 / 3000 is 32%. General advice is do not exceed 30% but even 30% is far from ideal. Lower is generally better but you can drop your revolving utilization just prior to applying for new credit, requesting CLI's, requesting APR reductions, etc. You don't need to constantly keep it extremely low. Just generally aim to keep it at 30% or less.
@Sharaby86 wrote:
I'm fairly new to credit history as you can see my oldest card is about 18 months old and I have opened 5 credit cards in the last 2 years.
What are my odds for getting approved?? Should I wait it out possibly til next year?
18 months is a very short credit history and 5 new accounts is a lot of new account for such a credit profile. Let your new accounts age before considering applying for anything else and carefully consider your credit card applications. Don't get caught up in the excitement of approvals. Make sure you're starting off by carefully analyzing your needs/wants including your spend. Use that info to determine which cards suit you best. With the BCE, for example, are the bonus categories really major spend categories for you? Have you run the numbers for your spend to determine the rewards that you would stand to get? Have you carefully compared the numbers versus the BCP? Don't just at the AF. Consider total cost/benefit.
