Gardening?

[Anonymous]

Hi I am new to the forum after lurking around for some time now. I am trying to understand the abbreviations and have just about got it. I am still a bit confused about the whole garden. There are garden goals and people gardening for months.  What exactly is gardening? Pardon my confusion.

[coldnmn]

It gives an explanation on the first page in the gardening club meeting message.  Also at the top of this sticky there is a page helpful threads. In there is a guide to common abbreviations. I hope this helps.

edit:I almost forgot welcome to the forum. 

[Anonymous]

Very much. Thank you

[Sevenfeet]

Think of "gardening" as the "credit card rehab thread". This forum is designed to help people gain and maintain their credit. But like with a lot of things, people tend to get pretty obsessive about it, applying for credit that honestly isn't in their best interest...more like a gambler's "high" than anything else. So the gardening thread encourages people to NOT apply for anything new for extended periods of time and there is a virtual reward system that you see in people's signatures (like mine).

Since constantly applying for stuff tends to lower your credit rating too if you do too many inquiries in a year, it's a good thing to hold off new applications and "garden" so to speak until you really need new credit or can actually benefit from a new product. What is the threshold for a card benefiting you? It varies from person to person, but for me I have to see savings of $200 a year a year or more on a new cash back card. At this point I think I have enough that I cannot see ever going for anything else.

[Anonymous]

Good explanation, Sevenfeet. To add to that, the term "gardening" comes from the concept of "garden what you've got." In other words, concentrate on what you already have and allow your accounts to "put down roots" and grow. It's akin to "seasoning" a tradeline. Old, established tradelines with good history are, overall, more valuable than newly established ones. So in the Garden Club thread, we refer to newly established accounts as "seedlings" and encourage members to take good care of managing them and focus on watching them mature and possibly grow throught CLIs.

[BungalowMo]

While gardening, it is acceptable practice to call your current card companies asking for CLI's (credit limit increase) with no HP (hard pull) on your credit.  You can also call and ask for lower APR's.  You can also ask for PC's (product change) to a better, more attractive card.

Any perks you can receive without a hard inquiry on your reports is totally fine, and actually encouraged!

That, my friend, is the art of gardening!!!  Adding a little fertilizer to your already planted flower beds!

Oh...and another delayed "Welcome to the Forums"!! 

[Anonymous]

---

@BungalowMo wrote:

While gardening, it is acceptable practice to call your current card companies asking for CLI's (credit limit increase) with no HP (hard pull) on your credit.  You can also call and ask for lower APR's.  You can also ask for PC's (product change) to a better, more attractive card.

Any perks you can receive without a hard inquiry on your reports is totally fine, and actually encouraged!

That, my friend, is the art of gardening!!!  Adding a little fertilizer to your already planted flower beds!

Oh...and another delayed "Welcome to the Forums"!! 

---

A great description...Thanks for sharing!!