@QuakerOatmeal wrote:
How many inquiries is considered "a lot"? I know Chase considers anything 5+ unacceptable to get credit with them, but in the big picture, what is considered a lot?
I'm sitting on 14 inquiries at the moment, which is really the only thing thats hurting my score. Most of those inquiries were approvals so at the time I thought the inquiry would more or less get cancelled out by the new credit line. I've seen some folks with 30+ inquiries and I'm just wondering how to gauge where I stand...
You mention Chase and you are thinking of their 5/24 rule. You have a mistaken (but common) view of it. The rule does not limit the number of inquiries you can have. That rule addresses how many credit cards were opened in the last 24 months. A person could have 30 inquiries on the report Chase pulls and still have opened fewer than 5 credit cards. Likewise he could have only two inquiries on the report and have opened six cards.
You have an idea that the hurtful scoring impact of an inquiry gets cancelled out by the helpful scoring impact of a new credit line. New tradelines do not in themselves help your score -- unless possibly if you had almost no tradelines at all. In fact, a new tradeline typically hurts your score, by lowering your age-related factors (Age of Youngest Account and Average Age of Accounts). There may be good reasons to get a new card (e.g. a great signup bonus) but those reasons do not include helping your score. The only exception might be if you had a high utilization, but if so expanding your capacity to incur greater CC debt is not the best way to solve the problem existing high debt.
Best way to solve the scoring impact of inquiries is to not open any new accounts for a year. That will help your score in a lot of ways.
