Originally Posted by drbond
If you are young or have any negatives or are relatively limited or have a score under 780 then you will be headed downhill fast. It may even result in horrible credit in the near future and no ability to buy anything significant for many years of no applications.
Going to respectfully disagree here. I've seen folks who are young, of modest income, and have scores around 700 churn with great success (and keep their scores around 700). In fact, sometimes the large number of accounts seems to be beneficial for someone young because it adds a lot of positive history to an otherwise thin credit file. The inquiries don't really make a lot of difference after the first few, and if you plan a bit, you can get to know which issuers pull which bureaus in your area and space out your apps accordingly. FICO weighs inquiries much less heavily after 6 months and not at all after 12 months, so if you go with a ~3-month schedule, the older inquiries will roll off the scoring model as the new ones are added.
The most important thing is never to miss any payments. Having a lot of accounts with different due dates can be like playing with fire in this regard.