Just saw this after a few years here on MyFICO.com
I am 54 years old and had credit when I was younger (30 years ago). My Amex cards had points but they never seemed like they were worth dealing with so for simplicity I started paying cash for everything or using a debit card. I was an all cash guy for many many years, no credit cards, no car loans, no mortgages. Then one day I noticed an alert on my Amazon Prime account saying I would have earned slightly over $5,000 in the last year if I had a Chase Amazon Prime card . . . so I applied for one and that started my credit awareness of how good points could be now. I quickly added a few more cards (USAA Visa, DCU Visa, AMEX Plat and Gold, Pen Fed, and most recently an X1 card. most of the cards were acquired in 2020 but I did add the X1 in January of this year. My inquiries reflect this as I am currently 17/24 months but only 4/12 months and 1/6 months. Acquiring all of the cards in 2020 meant I could not get into the Chase ecosystem and I have been gardening for awhile now. In November of this year I will be 2/24 and down to 7 total inquiries.
My new card goal is to get the Chase Sapphire Reserve and have my wife get the CSP in November. I also plan to add an Amex Business Platinum card before the end of the year. My long term goal is to get an Amex Centurion card within the next couple years. I spent $375K on Amex personal cards in 2021 and am on track to spend close to that this year. I am new with them so I understand they will want to see a few years history before I get the offer, but it is the long term goal I have my eye on.
My goal for credit scores is to increase my Equifax. Current scores are EQ 842 / TU 832 / EX 786 I want to get EQ over 800 Average age of accounts is hurting me with EQ so patience is key here.
My points goal is to get my AMEX points over 2 million. I am currently sitting at 1.42 million. I have been collecting them since November of 2020 and I have not used any yet.
Early on I was just applying without any real strategy and now that I have defined my strategy I just need to be patient and wait for my inital card spree to age enough to open the possibility of getting in with Chase.
I have been away from the US for 3-4 years and let some a couple of items go to collections. Bad decision on my part but I need to move forward.
Right now I am at a low 568 and my goal is 720. I have a lot of questions in this journey and I am so happy to have a forum where I am able to learn and have support in getting to the 720.
So far I am 11 days into my journey and have been cleaning up my report I applied for a few different programs and cards to help me with my quest.
I have a student loan that has 100% on-time payments but the current amount is higher than the starting amount due to interest and forbearance.
Fingerhut and associated collections account 4 years old
Voluntary surrender of a car less than 3k 4 years ago.
I have a Self loan and will get a credit card through them in 3 months.
Discover it Secured card $200 limit
Capital One Secured card not sure of the limit they asked for $49 so we will see
Chime Credit builder Credit card $500
Credit One - Not sure if I will keep it because the fees are too high. I have not received it yet but I want to cancel it but not sure yet how this will affect my credit.
Thinking to pay for a monthly program that will report my rental and utilities but I need to research this further.
So I am just getting everything ready and soon I will be able to use the cards under 10% utilization.
I am excited to see what 2023 will bring.
