ZontarTheThingFromVenus

I have two Citi HHonors Visa cards (10K each) which I opened in March. My plan is to eventually cancel these (after waiting 6 months) and open two new Citi AA cards when an attractive bonus offer pops up. What should be my strategy -

1) Close both HH cards first, then apply for the AA cards

or

2) Apply for the AA cards and offer to close one or both of the HH cards to get AA approval

And I also have the no fee basic Amex HH card as my primary Hilton card which I plan to keep forever.

On a side note - is the 18-24 month Citi window for both the HH and AA cards together, or is there a separate window for each. I was thinking of alternating closing and opening on yearly basis HH -> AA -> HH -> AA -> .... That would get me 2 years between application dates for both the HH and AA cards.

goAsia

I don't think you have to wait 18 months with the HH cards. I've read reports of people getting them again after 65 days.

It's not necessary to close the HH cards to get the AA cards. The only reason would be if you think Citi wouldn't want to extend more credit to you. Your plan of swapping out cards every 2 years sounds pretty good, but you may want to keep one card just so you can establish a long term, on going relationship with Citi.

dchoe

Don't close Citi cards. When you apply for a new Citi card and you don't get an instant approval, call them. Ask for a manual review of your application and then you can close or reduce credit lines of existing accounts to open the new account.

sdsearch

There are two separate "clocks" at Citi (for personal cards; business cards are different and more complicated so I won't cover those here):

You cannot do more than 2 Citi credit card applications in any 65-day period. Denied applications are counted just as much as approved applications for this clock.

Then, totally seprately, and only for AA (and having nothing do with HH): You cannot apply for another (one or two) Citi AA (personal) card(s) until 12 to 18 to 26 months after your last successful app for any Citi AA (personal) card. It matters not whether you still have that card or not, and this clock is only between AA cards you were approved for before and AA cards you're applying for now.

So the second clock only applies AA->AA.

The first clock is the only one that maters HH->AA, or AA->HH, or HH->HH.

Because of the vast difference between these two clocks, you may be able to do several rounds of HH card apps in between each pair of AA card apps (since you can applly for HH cards as often as 2 every 65 days, though that only makes sense if you can satisfy the spend requirement that quickly).