0/6 or 0/12 Between Apps with young file?

[uncredited]

This question is a break-out thread from my other thread specifically to try to get additional opinions on a question @Kforce brought up there, but was getting buried in the larger thread.

What I'm specifically looking for is additional opinions on, for a young file (3 years oldest), with 4 accounts (7mo (or 8mo depending how you count) youngest) for conservative banks (FNBO, USB), in the current economic climate, is going 0/6, 1/12 too early to app for the next one, and should I be waiting for 0/12?

My original plan was to app now at 0/6, 1/12, but this topic of 0/12 came up, and made me reconsider that, but I also wanted to gather additional opinions rather than just react to one single opinion.

Account ages:

36mo

23mo

13mo

7mo (or 8 depending how you count.)

I could app Feb so oldest is 3 years exact, I could app Mar so second oldest is 2 years exact, or could wait until July so youngest is 12/13 mo depending how you count.

Also, no interaction with USB in the past, but for FNBO, apped 14mo ago and was dened due to "not enough other cards" (have since added 2.)

Obviously I'd rather not sit on my hands needlessly, but if prevailing opinion is that's what I should do, then, that's where I am.  Thanks, all!

[uncredited]

Got an mf alert that I got a random +12 on EQ, not tied to any statement reporting, so guessing the oldest hitting the 3 year mark is generating a positive result on the report. Just eq for now but the others probably see a bump in the coming days, too. 

Any second opinions about if I should be apping, likely fnbo, now with the youngest card at 8mo oldest at 3y (0/6), or if I should be waiting until the youngest is over 1y (0/12)?

Trying to plan how I pay this months statements as well, I've been keeping 2 of 4 reporting a little but would make sure to AZEO if I think I'm apping in the coming weeks.

[NoHardLimits]

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@uncredited wrote:

Got an mf alert that I got a random +12 on EQ, not tied to any statement reporting, so guessing the oldest hitting the 3 year mark is generating a positive result on the report. Just eq for now but the others probably see a bump in the coming days, too. 

Any second opinions about if I should be apping, likely fnbo, now with the youngest card at 8mo oldest at 3y (0/6), or if I should be waiting until the youngest is over 1y (0/12)?

Trying to plan how I pay this months statements as well, I've been keeping 2 of 4 reporting a little but would make sure to AZEO if I think I'm apping in the coming weeks.

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With your oldest revolving account passing the 3 year mark, you have likely changed FICO scorecards from "young" to "mature".

I'm not sure if your profile is strong enough or not to apply at 1/12 rather than 0/12.  However, I would definitely wait until your second oldest account passes the 2 year mark.  That's only one month away, and it will no longer be considered a new account at that point.

[Kforce]

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@NoHardLimits wrote:

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With your oldest revolving account passing the 3 year mark, you have likely changed FICO scorecards from "young" to "mature".

I'm not sure if your profile is strong enough or not to apply at 1/12 rather than 0/12. 

However, I would definitely wait until your second oldest account passes the 2 year mark. 

That's only one month away, and it will no longer be considered a new account at that point.

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Not a bad compromise.

I think @uncredited 's  fingers are getting numb from sitting on them.

[Anonymalous]

As you know, I'm a new-ish file as well (about 2.75 years), and I waited a full 12 months before I applied for my latest card. I specifically waited that long because the last time I applied they rejected me (for too much new credit in the previous year), so I wanted to let my latest acquisitions pass the 1 year mark.

I got approved this time, with no hitches. In fact, they gave me my highest SL to date ($12K). I wouldn't have bothered waiting this long, except it's a local credit union, and they seem to have conservative underwriting. For nearly anything else, I'm fairly confident I can apply every 3-6 months fairly safely.

When you're counting months, it's safest to count full months. When I applied and was rejected for the CU card the first time last December, the $30K in new credit they cited included increases from the previous December, which were technically more than a year old. But to them, it was still within the last 12 months. So this time I didn't just wait until I passed the 1 year mark in December, I waited until the month clocked over and applied on January 1st.

For what it's worth, one of the 2 cards I got last December (after the CU rejected me) was from Elan, which along with U.S. Bank is part of USBancorp. The card I got was the Max Cash Preferred, which is almost identical to U.S. Bank's Cash+. Elan does have slightly more liberal underwriting than U.S. Bank, but they're not that different, and I was able to get the card when I was 0/9 (1/12) and had only 18 months of credit history. I also got my FNBO card when I had just 9 months of credit history, and was 1/6 and 2/12.

So based on my experience, yes. Based on yours? Who knows. Your relatively slow pace has led to more rejections than I would have expected.

[Kforce]

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@Anonymalous wrote:

Your relatively slow pace has led to more rejections than I would have expected.

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I agree with this statement.   

Was one of the posters recommending him to apply the first time around.

Maybe it's his user name !

FNBO might be following the thread

[uncredited]

+25 on TU up to 794 now. Nearly up to 800 without a loan on file. I'm sure that's as high as it's going to go, so I'll cherish that number! Of course EX is the one that matters and they haven't posted any updates yet. But still, it's fun to watch the huge dump of points. Based on history, I think EX will no go up nearly as hgih as the other two, it seems a lot more stable.

That's interesting about moving over to the mature scorecard. I remember hearing about that sort of thing, and also that it can be a double edged sword, but somehow it feels like an achievement anyway.

That does seem like a good middle of the road solution to wait for the second oldest to hit 2y. I'd really wait until April like @Anonymalous said if doing that since IDK how FNBO counts it, but late-March might mean "Apr 1" depending in the bank as to when they count it as 2y (I've heard Chase uses exact date, and USB uses 1st of month, don't know about FNBO.) Good advice!   If anyone strongly thinks I should just sit on those numb fingers until 0/12 speak now, but, otherwise, it sounds like the plan is to app beginning of April!

@Anonymalous Yeah, I remember that case where the CU rejected you due to too much new credit from CLIs. It always stuck out to me after my FNBO rejection for, essentially "not ENOUGH new credit!" Still the weirdest rejection reason I ever heard, but SOMETHING about my file made them want to see a thicker file. Or it was really something else entirely and that reason was fake. They were consistent though, because "insufficient credit history" was their reasoning on prequal rejections as well as the app, and only on the phone they clarified it as not enough accounts.

And yeah, very good point about "full months", not doing that is possibly what went wrong with Chase the first time around, because the second time around they liked me pretty well, and then shortly after gave me a huge auto CLI to become my highest (until Amex leapfrogged them.) That's the same reason July is the date for 0/12 (June is the Chase annivesary.) In April it would be 0/9 by whole months.

I think you really summarized it best with "based on yours, who knows".  Somehow I'm the outlier of every average.

@Kforce Haha, if FNBO were watching this thread they'd have been sending me mailers by now to just get me to shut up and hand them money.

So....are we aiming for April now?  Or should I just get used to numb fingers until July?

[Anonymalous]

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@uncredited wrote:

@AnonymalousYeah, I remember that case where the CU rejected you due to too much new credit from CLIs. It always stuck out to me after my FNBO rejection for, essentially "not ENOUGH new credit!" Still the weirdest rejection reason I ever heard, but SOMETHING about my file made them want to see a thicker file. Or it was really something else entirely and that reason was fake. They were consistent though, because "insufficient credit history" was their reasoning on prequal rejections as well as the app, and only on the phone they clarified it as not enough accounts.

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What I've taken from your experience is there's a sweet spot when it comes to the rate of applications. We've seen plenty of other new files go on massive sprees, and end up with a dozen cards or even more in the first 2 years. Their individual credit limits tend to be lower, and they often mix in some subprime cards, but they also qualify for some good cards, and their total CL is often fairly high. That proves someone new to credit can be successful with a high velocity, and somewhere in there is one of the end sweet spot.

I'm probably a good example of the other end of the sweet spot. I've spaced my applications about 6 months apart, so I don't have nearly as many cards as some of the other new files. But my CLs are much higher. I went from a $300 CL with my first card, to a $8K+ SL with my second card. I've stopped requesting CLIs so my total could presumably be even higher, but both my mean and median CLs are over $10,000. Also, all my cards are from prime lenders.

You went slower than I, and I think that hurt you. Lenders clearly want to see at least 2, and probably 3 or more tradelines, so front loading a couple applications seems important. An SSL loan or the like would probably have helped you, as well. In general, you have to apply for a few cards for the sake of building credit, instead of only applying for the one perfect card you really want.

Though at this point, you should hopefully be over that hump. You're not a new file anymore, you did snag a few other cards, and presumably you have a perfect payment history. So you've passed the basic aging thresholds, and you have enough cards to have a lot of paid as agreeds on your credit report. 

Though who knows about FNBO? They pulled in their geofence and started cutting CLs about a year ago when the economy started to get worse. Which isn't a surprise because they're not too big to fail and they're a private company, but if they're still concerned about excess exposure, that could definitely affect an application.

[uncredited]

Yeah, I think I kind of made myself a walking DP at the slow speed. It seemed at the time to make sense to go for the 0/12 before my second card, and it did land a hit with a great card in Citi, but I also seemed to have been really lucky to snag that, because other banks seemed really uninterested at the time, and I may have gotten lucky apping Citi just before the weekend they were ravamping the product to a new reward scheme.  (They revamped DC to earn TYP but at a 1:1 redemption rate, the change taking effect between the Fri I apped and the Mon I was approved.)

But after that things definitely went sideways with two rejections. I'm not sure what the DP anyone could learn from me is, though.  I think I'd waited 4mo before the next one, and that was the Chase rejection, clearly too early, but then the one after that was the FNBO rejection which was clearly looking for a thicker file.  But being over 3 cards very much seems to have made a significant impact in the way Chase viewed me, for the next time, and that's also more or less in line with what FNBO said they wanted.  I think you'd early on (or somone did) said that 3 is a magic number.  In reality there may be importance in picking up those subprime cards earlier on as a gateway to better cards sooner.  Would I be better off or in the same spot now if I'd gone that route? IDK.  But if someone new were to ask me for my advice, I don't honestly feel I've learned anaything practical to tell them despite it, other than that having 3 does seem to be important.

FNBO...yeah....I mean I've been very unsure of them since last time, of course, and following their whole geofence/CLD pattern fairly closely on and off since then.  I honestly don't know how I should feel about where they are.  The one (and only) thing going for me with them is that I don't recall any discussion about their cobrands involved in all that.  OTOH, a card with a fairly high rewards value with a minimum $50 payout monthly probably has very high underwriting thresholds and higher spend expectations, and it's a product where the business version of it expecting 5-6 digit monthly spend is sure to be the primary focus and the consumer version just kind of "exists" because it must. Magic 8 ball don't fail me now.

[Anonymalous]

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@uncredited wrote:

I think you'd early on (or somone did) said that 3 is a magic number.  In reality there may be importance in picking up those subprime cards earlier on as a gateway to better cards sooner. 

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Subprime isn't even necessary. Start with the Cap1 Platinum or the Discover It (or Chase's newer Freedom Rise), then within the next year apply for a couple other cards from prime lenders known to be friendly to new files. A lot of the big credit unions are fairly generous, Amex seems pretty easy, Synchrony and Comenity have their detractors but they're not that strict and have some good cards, and so on. Just don't immediately apply for cards from more conservative lenders, like US Bank or Barclay (or pre-Rise Chase), or cards that seem to have a bit stiffer underwriting (Fidelity's 2% card comes to mind).

My natural inclination is similar to yours. I don't want a wallet full of cards. After I applied for my first card, I did the math and found the ideal set of cards that would work together with minimal overlap, and I wanted those cards and nothing else. But I got shot down for my next card. While I was aware of the concept before, that rejection really helped sink it in that I couldn't just jump to the end game, and pick the final cards I wanted in my wallet. Building credit is more about picking the next stepping stone. Some of the cards I'll pick up along the way will remain useful, but others will become marginalized or completely supplanted (my 1.5% and 2% flat rate cards are less useful now that I have a 2.4% card). Also, the landscape continually changes. New cards are issued, old cards are revised, SUBs shift constantly, and lenders change their standards (FNBO was much friendlier to new files when I got my Evergreen, for instance). So you can't plan too far ahead.