Guys I’ve messed up - don’t judge

[LakeLife]

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@jmw1 wrote:

With that title, I thought you went ballers and accumulated $150k in debt buying handbags and jewelry.  Glad to see it's no big deal in the grand scheme. Two years seasoning and it's gone for good. Lenders have their own algorithms for negatively weighing inquiries and credit seeking behavior.  Scores going up as the inquiries age isn't an indication that the lenders will be more forgiving.  Don't app any more until all of them are gone. 

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Glad I was not the only one!  LOL

[calyx]

Like the others, I thought this was going to be so much "worse" than it is.
Excessive credit seeking is a thing we see pretty regularly around here.

I echo was the others said - Freeze your reports.   Find something else to do while you wait for things to age.   Stay out of the approvals forum.  Come play with us in the Garden, find another hobby (mine while I settled down was creating an excessive number of spreadsheets to keep myself entertained, and I realized recently that I really missed the boat with some data).    Read a book.   You'll be fine, you just need things to age.   

Honestly, the thing I found to be most "entertaining" to tide me over was organizing a list of the cards I wanted in the future, so I could make sure to plug any signficant cashback holes.   Also, realizing that the difference between 3% and 5% cashback on some amounts isn't worth the (temporary) dings to credit and I can wait for more advantageous timing.   Start obsessing over your mortgage score and that will DEFINITELY want you to pump the breaks since it only loves old accounts and time.   Heck, you can even start playing "reindeer games" with your scoring (I realized that I could move spending ot get one card to 'naturally' report 96% utilization just to see what it did, with the caveat that I was willing to take any adverse action if anyone got spooked).

But yeah, those INQs aren't going anywhere.   I had documented fraud, and it wasn't worth the effort to get rid of the INQs from that.   You just need to sit tight.   If you need any legitimate repair help, go to the rebuilding forum, the knowledge base there is amazing, and it'll give you something to do while you don't app.