Hey everyone,
hope you are all doing well. So I need some advice, I was just approved for the blue cash preferred which has been a long time goal of mine. In my opinion it may be the single best card out there. But there are a couple cons that are hard to ignore.
1) it will put me over 5/24, I have 1 of my accounts falling off in September so I'll be back down to 3/24 then. And at that point accepting it wouldn't put me over 5/24 anymore.
2) the point loss with accepting a new account is the other issue, I don't think I want to lose anymore points right now. I'm already uncomfortable with where my scores are currently
but the reward structure, the fast growing credit limits with Amex are both hard to ignore. If I accept now, by this time next year I could have increased my credit limit by 6-9x potentially.
plus there's a chance that if I decline the offer now, I may not get approved again next time.
what would you do? I know credit is a highly personal affair, I'm just curious what you would do if you were in my position
I'm already in with chase, but a family member of mine works there and they told me being over 5/24 can also disqualify you for credit limit increases. Not just new accounts.
im worried about my score mainly because I'm looking at moving within the next year and my credit will be pulled during the process. Plus I was denied for pay over time increase with Amex cause my score was too low, and I don't want my score to start affecting credit limit increases as well.
It's a nice card, yes, especially the first year. How old is you newest account? If it's less than a year old you are already taking a score hit for that, so your score won't drop too much more by adding this. All you are really doing is pushing the drop off date of the new account penalty down the road a bit. But if you plan to get this card a few months from now you'd be foolish not accept the offer now because at least now you are overlapping the new account penalty so it would actually drop off sooner and help you out long term. The final point is that your approval will most likely be a soft pull since you already have an AmEx card. Your score might not drop at all.
I think you mean this card would put you AT 5/24, not over it. If one account aging past a year puts you at 3/24, that means you are currently 4/24, right?
Yes you are correct I'm currently at 4/24, but my understanding is 5/24 means 5 accts or more disqualifies you, once you hit 5 accounts in 24 months, you are disqualified. Is this not correct? That is how it was explained to me.
also yes I will 100% be getting this card at some point, but if I were to get the card now it would drop my average age of accts under 2 years, it would also drop my age of youngest acct from 10 months to 1 months.
2 years for average age is a big threshold one of the more significant ones I think. these 2 combined would result in a pretty significant point drop I think. Even without a hard pulls. I don't know what the penalty for dropping under 2 years average age would be. But I know I got the following score bumps for youngest acct.
10 points at 3 month
6 points at 6 months
3 points at 9 months.
@SRT4kid93 wrote:Yes you are correct I'm currently at 4/24, but my understanding is 5/24 means 5 accts or more disqualifies you, once you hit 5 accounts in 24 months, you are disqualified. Is this not correct? That is how it was explained to me.
That is correct. It doesn't seem to be the brick wall that it once was, but that is how you figure it.
Also you mentioned 5/24 being a bar to CLIs with Chase. That used to be, but I don't think it's near as big of a deal now. They probably still look at it, but it does not necessarily disqualify you if they like the rest of your profile. There are numerous reports of people (including me) getting Chase CLIs when at 5/24 or more.
EQ8 783, TU8 751, EX8 765 as of June 6The 5/24 issue isn't as big of a deal. Like I said, even if I got a new account today. I would drop back to 4/24 I'm august/september.
the potential point loss is more what I'm worried about cause like I said, I will be moving in the next year, and will need my credit to be as good as possible.
right now I'm a couple months away from the "no new revolvers score card" and if I were to accept this card I would go from having my youngest account at 10 months to 1 month.
so I would feel like I would be giving up all the progress I made over the past 10 months.
but in the other hand it's been my goal card for years now.
@SRT4kid93 wrote:The 5/24 issue isn't as big of a deal. Like I said, even if I got a new account today. I would drop back to 4/24 I'm august/september.
the potential point loss is more what I'm worried about cause like I said, I will be moving in the next year, and will need my credit to be as good as possible.
I mean, if this is what you are going for then you should wait until after you move to get it. But it sounded like you were just going to wait a few months, like in Sept. You'd be better off getting it now rather than 2-3 months from now. But it sounds like you really should wait until after you move. You've already got two good grocery and restaurant cards. The only big thing BCP brings to the table is gas and streaming.
I say put it off for a while, the pre-approval should still be available in the future as long as you keep things clean with the gold card. The net return on the BCP after the annual fee doesn't really seem that enticing to me, especially if you already get 4x membership rewards on groceries with the gold. I'd think the BCE would be a better addition to the gold since you get the 3% online spend and the same 3% fuel as the BCP. I haven't used mine much since I got the smartly 4%, but it was a pretty good card especially when you can combine the 3% with the amex offers.
