I have some upcoming home improvements and I was debating whether I could try to get a new card or two to try to get a little extra sub cashback with it. I have heard good things about FNBO here so I tried them first and got a pre-approval for $3,500 for their Evergreen card. Not too shabby considering I am lol/24 and lol/12. The Evergreen card currently has a pretty decent $200 sub after spending $1,000 in the first 3 months. I decided to go for it and got the expected "under review" message and eventually they asked for the last couple years of W-2 forms. I have no problem providing those. After 3 days of habitually checking my application status, I finally saw that I was approved, but only for $500 and at their highest interest rate of 25.49%. Disappointing considering the pre-approval, but not unexpected given how aggressive I have been with other acquistions over the past year.
Since I apparently don't take hints, I decided to peruse Credit Karma and saw an "exclusive offer" for the Upgrade Triple Cash Rewards card. The offer is a $300 sub after spending $500 and 3 consecutive months of on-time payments. I haven't seen that kind of stipulation on a sub before, but then again Upgrade isn't really a traditional credit card. Since Upgrade seems to approve everyone and the Triple Cash Rewards give 3% back on pretty broadly defined home, health, and auto purchases, I went for it! I got approved for $7,000 at 21.65%. Now Upgrade's cards are sort of a hybrid between credit card and personal loan, so the starting limit isn't as impressive as it might sound, but it works fine for my current situation.
Now to encourage myself actually nurture a seedling and do some gardening beyond the sprout stage, I decided to freeze all 3 of my credit reports. That was suprisingly painless and easy to do! Then I got the idea to try for some credit line increases since I don't have to fear an accidental hard pull now! 😁 I doubled the limits on my Elan Worker's Credit Union Max Cash Preferred and Rewards+ cards to 4k each after 6 months of ownership! I'm particularly happy with that result on the Rewards+, as I haven't used it for 4 of those 6 months ever since I discovered that pizza places code as fast food restuarants instead of just dining. I got a $1,800 increase to $17,800 on my Elan Bank of Texas Max Cash. I asked for a 3x increase on my Amex Blue Cash Preferred, which is currently carrying a 0% promo balance on it, and instead got a 2x increase to $16k! That will drop the utilization by quite a bit, so a nice result. Most impressive of all was my PayPal mastercard. I asked to double the limit to $20k, and actually got just that!
Now to garden for the next two years while all these inquires fall off and my accounts age. 2 years happens to line up pretty well with an expected life change, so I think I should actually stick with it this time. 😄 I promise my seedling will one day grow into something more!
