MzGreen

MrGreen and I are about to make a large ($20K) purchase next week, and the merchant is cool with splitting it between as many cards as we like.

Of course that meant it was time for an AOR.

Got our 7 new cards in the mail (3 in my name, 4 in his), and we're going to put about $5K each on 4 of them. (Got the spend covered for the other three.)

So, I'm just trying to navigate how to make this go as smoothly as possible without setting off any red flags.

We're looking at an Amex, a Citi, and two Barclays. Paying off the Amex/Citi immediately, and paying off a chunk of the Barclays but financing some of it over the next few months since the Arrivals have a 12mo intro 0% APR.

Just a little paranoid about running into snags (like, getting accounts closed).

- Issues with making a large purchase on a new card?
- Does it make a difference if it's the FIRST charge? Should we make a small purchase on each first?
- Better to wait until after the first statement? (All of the statements will have cut by the 20th, so we could.)
- Worth calling in advance to notify them about the large charge? Would that serve to alleviate concerns or just set off a flag?
- Do they care about the charge price relative to the spend requirement? Like, if the amount of one purchase is exactly the min spend?
- What about the charge price relative to the limit? For example, the limit on the Amex is $7.5K, so would a $5K purchase set off an alarm because it's over 50% of the limit (even though we'd pay it off immediately)?

Also, we'll be leaving balances of 29% the limits on the Barclays cards, so hopefully that util-ratio doesn't bother anyone too much while we pay them down over the next few months.