I'm at a weird point in my mileage career and could use some (hopefully friendly) advice. I'm coming up on my one year MS anniversary and need to think about closing some cards, and maybe using my decent credit scores to open some new credit lines. Here's the relevant info I can think of:
1. Current credit estimates are scores of 838 on CS and 778 on CK.
2. My wife and I have a two year old daughter and a new one on the way; our traveling future looks very dim.
3. We don't travel very much, but would like to go back to Japan (in the next ten years) and take our parents to Hawaii in the next five years or so. Most of our other travels are my wife and daughter flying short distances, last minute, on Southwest.
4. My current cards are: CSP, Freedom, Ink Plus, Chase British Airways, Barclays Arrival, Amex Old Blue.
5. My credit is basically maxed with Chase, I had to transfer credit lines to open up my last Chase card.
6. I use my Old Blue to buy gcs and essentially earn 5% on all daily spending. My other cards are sock drawered.
7. I have 200k UR points and 125k avios gathering dust.
My plan and questions:
1. Transfer points from CSP to Ink Plus. Close CSP and BA cards to avoid AFs and to free up credit with Chase.
2. Close the Arrival card to dodge AF.
3. We are planning on buying a new car in the next couple of months, and a second car next year. Do I avoid signing up for new cards until we have both cars?
4. Since I'm focusing and getting essentially 5% cb, and don't use FF miles with any regularity, should I even bother looking at churnable cards? I will need the miles one day, but should i stockpile knowing there will likely be devaluations? Or just focus on CB?
5. If you advise to look at new cards, I'm thinking about going for the Discover It and Citi Double Cash cards, for AF free building of long term credit. My current longest credit card is 14ish years, another store card is two years, and the other six are only a year of age. I need some more aging credit, right?
If you read all of this and are patient enough to give advice, my sincere thanks to you!
^