@Anonymous wrote:
Hate to say it but one of my most effective gardening techniques was to stop frequenting this forum. In addition I found keeping 99% of my forum activity to the garden thread helps immensely.
Really the biggest "trick" is time. I coming up on a year in the garden in a month and I've lost all my credit lust for more and "better" cards. Discovered that I have what I really wanted and need for our family's spending & after a year of cooling off following my post rebuild app spree the handful of juicy SUB and marginally improved earnings cards I *could * go after just aren't worth the effort to me anymore.
IMO any SUB that's worth at least $500 in hard cash ("points" and "rewards" that are <1 cpp equivalent when redeemed for cash don't count) after 3-4K spend is still worth going after if you can meet the spend requirements without MSing. I'm probably going to stick to only applying for cards around Oct-Dec because that's when all my insurance policies get renewed, and it inevitably ends up costing 2K+. So I'm getting "free" money for essential spend.
Watching people with the trainwrecks does keep me planted in the garden a bit.... I still wish some of those who did make those transgressions would come back even though we have a generalized idea what might happen, so folks can without too much judgement or any, could help them out of their situation and explain why.... and be a teaching moment as to what happens if you do this..... Weve all made mistakes of one sort or another, or had to do things that arent what we should do... And theres more to it than You don't want to do this.... some of the fly-by folks think we have no idea or experience, and think they are doing something different, or can be the exception... we are all just numbers to machines in this credit biz.... Know some may be embarassed or think.. oh we told you so.... Wed still give them good advice to improve the situation they got themselves into.....
-J
