First post, need some advice.

[Anonymous]

My first post, hopefully this is in the right spot.  I'm coming up on my one year MS anniversary and need to think about closing some cards, and maybe using my decent credit scores to open some new credit lines. Here's the relevant info I can think of:

1. Current credit estimates are scores of 838 on CS and 778 on CK.
2. My wife and I have a two year old daughter and a new one on the way; our traveling future looks very dim.  I have 200k UR points and 125k avios gathering dust.
3. My current cards are: CSP, Freedom, Ink Plus, Chase British Airways, Barclays Arrival, Amex Old Blue.
4. My credit is basically maxed with Chase, I had to transfer credit lines to open up my last Chase card.
5. I use my Old Blue to buy gcs and essentially earn 5% on all daily spending. My other cards are sock drawered.

My plan:

1. Transfer points from CSP to Ink Plus. Close CSP and BA cards to avoid AFs and to free up credit with Chase.
2. Close the Arrival card to dodge AF.

My questions:
1. We are planning on buying a new car in the next couple of months, and a second car next year. Do I avoid signing up for new cards until we secure an auto loan?
2. Since I'm focusing and getting essentially 5% cb, and don't use FF miles with any regularity, should I even bother looking at churnable cards? I will need the miles one day, but should i stockpile knowing there will likely be devaluations? Or just focus on CB?
3. If you advise to look at new cards, I'm thinking about going for the Discover It and Citi Double Cash cards, for AF free building of long term credit. My current longest credit card is 14ish years, another store card is two years, and the other six are only a year of age. I need some more aging credit, right?

If you read all of this and are patient enough to give advice, my sincere thanks to you!

[jsucool76]

First of all, Welcome to MyFico. 

1. I would avoid signing up for new cards if you plan on buying a car, especially if you don't need them. 

2. If you're not going to use miles, focus on cash back. You have a lot of points, you could probably take a nice little vacation somewhere for free. Just gotta join some programs. If you have a plan to use your points, then look into churnable cards, and try to stay loyal to 2 programs, one airline, one hotel to maximize earnings. Churning is becoming more and more difficult as of late though. 

3. When you're ready to apply for new credit (I'd wait till after auto loans) the discover it is great for the 5% categories, and the DC is great for the 2% cash back on all purchases, but you don't want this to interfere with your blue cash spending, as you earn 5% on most purchases with that card. 

Hope this helps. 

[red259]

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@Anonymous wrote:

My first post, hopefully this is in the right spot.  I'm coming up on my one year MS anniversary and need to think about closing some cards, and maybe using my decent credit scores to open some new credit lines. Here's the relevant info I can think of:

1. Current credit estimates are scores of 838 on CS and 778 on CK.
2. My wife and I have a two year old daughter and a new one on the way; our traveling future looks very dim.  I have 200k UR points and 125k avios gathering dust.
3. My current cards are: CSP, Freedom, Ink Plus, Chase British Airways, Barclays Arrival, Amex Old Blue.
4. My credit is basically maxed with Chase, I had to transfer credit lines to open up my last Chase card.
5. I use my Old Blue to buy gcs and essentially earn 5% on all daily spending. My other cards are sock drawered.

My plan:

1. Transfer points from CSP to Ink Plus. Close CSP and BA cards to avoid AFs and to free up credit with Chase.
2. Close the Arrival card to dodge AF.

My questions:
1. We are planning on buying a new car in the next couple of months, and a second car next year. Do I avoid signing up for new cards until we secure an auto loan?
2. Since I'm focusing and getting essentially 5% cb, and don't use FF miles with any regularity, should I even bother looking at churnable cards? I will need the miles one day, but should i stockpile knowing there will likely be devaluations? Or just focus on CB?
3. If you advise to look at new cards, I'm thinking about going for the Discover It and Citi Double Cash cards, for AF free building of long term credit. My current longest credit card is 14ish years, another store card is two years, and the other six are only a year of age. I need some more aging credit, right?

If you read all of this and are patient enough to give advice, my sincere thanks to you!

---

Hi, welcome to the board. I would think with an auto loan coming up you would want to avoid new inqs until you have secured the financing etc (at least for the first car if your going to buy another car at the very end of next year you might be able to app for some cards in between). That way you have the best score going in and can get the best terms. Since you have the chase ink plus there is no need to keep the CSP as you correctly point out. What you may want to do is downgrade to the non-AF CS. That way you can keep the card for bonus on restaurant spend (the points from your freedom and CS can still be transferred to travel partners by your ink plus card). No need to keep the BA card open if your not going to be flying enough to offset the fee. Any chase cards you close you should see if you can move the CL to other cards to keep it available for future apps (keep in mind with time the cap on your credit with chase can increase). 

If your not going to be doing any real travel in the next few years then you probably want to get rid of the barclay arrival plus card. I would call in and see if you can get an AF waiver or some sort of retention offer first, but if not then I would cancel. I think there is also a non-AF version of the arrival card and you could downgrade to that if you really wanted to keep the relationship ongoing with Barclays and just SD it, but it will remain on your profile for the next 10 years if you close it so I don't think it will be much of a loss. In terms of cards you can add I think the citi double cash is a nice pick for both building history and earning cash back. The Discover It card is good for diversity of lenders, no AF and rotating categories. 

The final card I would consider would be the Amex ED. You can get backdating to the date of your blue card to help with your AAoAs. Its a travel card but its non-AF and the travel partners are decent. I would suggest you check the rules of each program you have points in to make sure you do what you need to make sure the points dont get forfeited due to inactivity,. Some programs require activity to keep the accounts open which can be as simple as moving a few points into the account to reset the clock.

[B335is]

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@Anonymous wrote:

My first post, hopefully this is in the right spot.  I'm coming up on my one year MS anniversary and need to think about closing some cards, and maybe using my decent credit scores to open some new credit lines. Here's the relevant info I can think of:

1. Current credit estimates are scores of 838 on CS and 778 on CK.
2. My wife and I have a two year old daughter and a new one on the way; our traveling future looks very dim.  I have 200k UR points and 125k avios gathering dust.
3. My current cards are: CSP, Freedom, Ink Plus, Chase British Airways, Barclays Arrival, Amex Old Blue.
4. My credit is basically maxed with Chase, I had to transfer credit lines to open up my last Chase card.
5. I use my Old Blue to buy gcs and essentially earn 5% on all daily spending. My other cards are sock drawered.

My plan:

1. Transfer points from CSP to Ink Plus. Close CSP and BA cards to avoid AFs and to free up credit with Chase.
2. Close the Arrival card to dodge AF.

My questions:
1. We are planning on buying a new car in the next couple of months, and a second car next year. Do I avoid signing up for new cards until we secure an auto loan?
2. Since I'm focusing and getting essentially 5% cb, and don't use FF miles with any regularity, should I even bother looking at churnable cards? I will need the miles one day, but should i stockpile knowing there will likely be devaluations? Or just focus on CB?
3. If you advise to look at new cards, I'm thinking about going for the Discover It and Citi Double Cash cards, for AF free building of long term credit. My current longest credit card is 14ish years, another store card is two years, and the other six are only a year of age. I need some more aging credit, right?

If you read all of this and are patient enough to give advice, my sincere thanks to you!

---

Welcome to the forum, great post.

I actually agree with your plan.  If you aren't using CSP heavily and have the Ink Plus, you might as well close or transfer the CSP credit line to Freedom.  Same with BA.  Have you considered going for Ink Bold?  I know there's tons of buzz about it being discontinued, but it's still a generous 50k UR points.  

Close AF Arrival - good move after year 1.

On to your questions.  

1)  You may want to get your actual Fico's, but it sounds like you have excellent credit.  BMW considers anything over 680 Dealer enhanced to be top tier.  I doubt adding another card or two is really going to matter unless you max them out.

2)  I think the next devalue will be American Airlines in 2015 - in particular the partner rewards.  That's not to say I wouldn't jump at a good offer when I see one, but generally 50k bonus is considered good these days.  Virgin Atlantic had a 90k offer recently, Alaska sometimes gets bumped to 50k - both have excellent transferability and are easily churned.  I go for travel rewards more so than cash because it forces me to do something for myself, versus just applying cash back as statement credit.  So decide how you want to rewards yourself first.

3)  People generally love Discover (mine, however is behind the debit card in the kitchen drawer).  The rotating 5% categories would probably work out well with your Freedom.  It seems you're leaning more for the cash back option though, so look into Sallie Mae:  5% cash back on first $250 each - gas and groceries per month.  US Bank Cash+ is another good card for picking two 5% categories.  

[takeshi74]

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@Anonymous wrote:

We are planning on buying a new car in the next couple of months, and a second car next year. Do I avoid signing up for new cards until we secure an auto loan?

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General advice would be to avoid new credit if you want the most favorable terms on the auto loan.  Even if you don't know the details you could think of it this way: Which is more important to you -- the auto loan or the miles you don't have any use for right now?

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@Anonymous wrote:

 I need some more aging credit, right?

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I don't think you need to worry about it if you're ~800.  AAoA is only 15%:

http://www.myfico.com/crediteducation/whatsinyourscore.aspx

I'm not saying go crazy with the new applications (consider that your loans will also drop your AAoA).

[Anonymous]

Thank you all for the input!  Very friendly and helpful place to be  

jsucool76- Thank you for the input and friendly welcome  I'm going to hold off on applying for new cards until we secure the loan.

red259- I had considered downgrading to the regular CS from the CSP, however, when I opened up my most recent card with Chase, I had to transfer credit.  My thought is, since I'm maxed with credit from them, to free it up by cancelling both the CSP and the BA card?  I know lines can increase, but I've only had a year long relationship with Chase. I will DEFINITELY check out the Amex ED card.  I have a joint card dating back to 2000, due to the fact that my parents opened an Amex card and put my name on it when I was in high school.  So, I think to help my AAoA, I will open another Amex card, probably after securing the car loan.

B335is- I'm using my AMEX Old Blue to fund GCs that I use for all of my spending, so I basically get 5% on everything.  The only reason I was looking at the DC and Discover It cards is because they are AF free and seemed like good cards to use to let age and increase my AAoA.  It sounds like another Amex card might be a better option, as my oldest AMEX card is 12 to 13 years older than all of my other credit lines?

takeshi74- Point taken.  I'm going to hold off until we have the car, it should be in the next month or so anyways.

[red259]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Thank you all for the input!  Very friendly and helpful place to be  

jsucool76- Thank you for the input and friendly welcome  I'm going to hold off on applying for new cards until we secure the loan.

red259- I had considered downgrading to the regular CS from the CSP, however, when I opened up my most recent card with Chase, I had to transfer credit.  My thought is, since I'm maxed with credit from them, to free it up by cancelling both the CSP and the BA card?  I know lines can increase, but I've only had a year long relationship with Chase. I will DEFINITELY check out the Amex ED card.  I have a joint card dating back to 2000, due to the fact that my parents opened an Amex card and put my name on it when I was in high school.  So, I think to help my AAoA, I will open another Amex card, probably after securing the car loan.

B335is- I'm using my AMEX Old Blue to fund GCs that I use for all of my spending, so I basically get 5% on everything.  The only reason I was looking at the DC and Discover It cards is because they are AF free and seemed like good cards to use to let age and increase my AAoA.  It sounds like another Amex card might be a better option, as my oldest AMEX card is 12 to 13 years older than all of my other credit lines?

takeshi74- Point taken.  I'm going to hold off until we have the car, it should be in the next month or so anyways.

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I guess maybe by cancelling the cards you can have a better shot at an instant approval later. The BA card should definitely go. My thought process was with the CS that you get to keep the bonus for restaurant spend and by consolidating the credit lines you can just move credit around the next time you app in order to get new cards. There is no guarantee that they will give you another card with more credit next time and they could easily come back to you and ask if you want to move credit around, which is why I am usually wary of giving credit back with Chase especially when they are pretty good with recon and letting you move lines around. 

[Anonymous]

My utilization of Chase cards is minimal, barely anything at all. If I don't get  instant approval, there's no way I would call recon at this point. I've got four cards and use less than $500 on average. I use my Old Blue to get  5% back everywhere, so restaurants wouldn't be a reason to keep CS imo.

[Kenny]

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@Anonymous wrote:

My utilization of Chase cards is minimal, barely anything at all. If I don't get  instant approval, there's no way I would call recon at this point. I've got four cards and use less than $500 on average. I use my Old Blue to get  5% back everywhere, so restaurants wouldn't be a reason to keep CS imo.

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I agree with everything you said except the not calling for recon on the Ink Bold if you go for it. 200k UR is awesome and 250k UR is even better.  I'd close any AF card that you have that will be hitting soon if you have no need for them. As the old blue doesn't have an AF and is obviously making your life a great 5% cb on daily spend. A lot of times with scores like you have (even the FAKO should indicate you have excellent credit.. you don't just get the cards with the limits that you've gotten without having excellent credit.) if you don't get instant approval it's usually just verifying that you actually meant to app for it and it wasn't some fluke.

[Anonymous]

I just don't know how i would justify to them needing the Ink Bold after having four cards with minimal utilization. And I'm kinda scared of getting the same CSR one of my friends did after I told him to call... He got absolutely grilled and destroyed, even after I had prepped him. Don't want all my spending habits questioned, if that makes sense.