CC Pursuing lost it's fun

[Tiggr]

The better you get at playing the game, the more you find that time is the determining factor, and waiting around isn't any fun. 

Once you're a couple years in you can get any card you want and then all you do is nothing. 

Now the fun part is helping others and friends in my age group start their journeys. 

[DONZI]

My first 21st century card was kind of on a whim.

Looking for a bank when my local credit union was bought/merged by an outsider, I found Fifth Third and they had all sorts of new and strange things!  I moved a bit of cash there and was happy with all the perks, including a whopping 1% interest on a money market account. 

Later I got some sort of offer for a 5/3rd card in the mail, or grabbed an info leaflet in the branch. After telling them my interest in a card the branch manager set me up with a secured revolving loan, a secured installment loan and a 'Trio Rewards'  card. It's actually a nice card IMO.. just not a very workable thing @ a $1000 SL. All hard pulls for anything though last I checked and AFAIK no auto CLI @ 5/3rd.

Very nice that she knew what to do and jumpstart my credit standing right out of the gate.

I kind of sabotaged it though I guess. I couldn't fight the urge to pay off the installment loan for very long. Still have the secured revolving loan but only used it once.. soon the be axed.

..the credit card rewards hook sunk in. Then I got offers not too long after resurrecting my credit use and nearly empty profile. The remainder of the story is spread around this forum. 

I've had computers & cell phones since they became a thing in the 20th century. However, I have very little need for a cell phone now and just couldn't find a useful niche for it..and I don't like carrying around anything for long that isn't an fountain pen, wallet or keys.

..so my credit card options are somewhat limited because phone insurance, apps and digital wallets mean nothing to me. As such, a bit of fun still lingers in that finding cards that are better tuned for me is a challenge...similar to what @SeanA mentioned.

[AndrewF]

Lately I noticed that many of the banks, albeit not all, have dramatically slashed the value of the SUB or have massively increased the amount of spend required to trigger it.

In the case of American Express I notice that a lot of their cards have done, for example $3000 of spend instead of $2000, and still have the same SUB of $250 or so, and Barclays has kept the spend requirements low but changed the SUBs from $200 or $150 to only $100.

Capital One has also started denying things, so I've heard, to too many recent inquiries or too many recent credit cards opened, particularly the VentureX, which is their flagship.

Somehow, don't ask me why, they approved me a couple months ago for a huge limit on that card.

The next one on my target list is a Credit One Omni Rewards. They approved my spouse but not me so while we're working on his bonus, I'm going to try for early exclusion again on Experian for four old bankruptcy accounts since they only seem to soft pull and hard pull Experian and in a few days I'll be in that three month window between when they're known to do EE and the removal date.

Since I'm in the doghouse for a few months on new credit card sign ups I'm going after bank account bonuses for the time being.