newbie...first time card churning.
 

Hi,

I signed up for the first time CC last year and first year fee is about to kick in. I am planning to close that card and apply for a new one to reduce the impact on the credit history. following are my questions.

1. Is this is the correct course of action I should do?
2. If I am applying for new card what would be the best offer right now? Looking for miles here.
3. Should I just cancel the card and try to increase the credit limit of another card I hold?

Appreciate your help.

Thanks.

Depends on which card it is.

it is the citi AA visa card.

Not sure what, exactly, the "best" course of action would be. However, for that card, it is quite common to be offered a retention bonus to keep it.

See http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/credi...all-cards.html

At the worst, they will probably offer to downgrade it to a card with no annual fee, so you can keep it open if you want to preserve the credit line. (Generally, Citi will not move a credit line to an existing card when you close a card.)

Regardless of any of that, you can certainly apply for whatever new card you want. See the link mia posted. However, if it has only been 11 months since your last successful AA application, you probably can not apply for any of the AA cards yet.

Thank you so much.

Do you actually fly AA? If you do, then you might want consider further the cost/benefit of keeping the card as they introduced travel benefits such as 1st bag free, priority boarding, and rebate on mileage redemption. I have elite status on UA but do fly AA occasionally and free bag and priority security line/boarding benefits (from the AA card) have been useful.

Well I recently used 65K miles. When did they introduce the rebate offer? Any idea if I could obtain the rebate on the recently used miles? (not traveled yet). Since I haven't traveled yet I could use the priority boarding and 1st checkin bag free.

check this thread in AA forum
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...-benefits.html

It started in early April. Check your AA account. It posts automatically with a line like "CITI 10% AWARD RDMPTION BONUS"

Oh that is super....I got 7500 miles back on my account. That is great.

Thanks. I will see what they would offer from the retention thanks...guys for being patient with me and helping me...

I just got a separate offer on my e-mail for united mileage plus for 65,000 points...so tempting. I am scared hard inquires will screw my credit score. Do you guys know when a offer is made do they still do a hard inquiry?

1. You will get an inquiry regardless of whether they "offer" it to you or not.

2. Hard inquiries will not "screw" your credit score. For myself and many, many others on this board, churning has actually increased my score after the first initial ding of 3-5 points or so.

3. The offer you received in your email is actually for 50k miles after spending $1k in 3 months, 5k for adding an authorized user, and 10k for spending $25k within one year.

4. There is a better offer FOUND HERE that offers the same mileage AND a $50 statement credit

It sounds like you aren't very familiar with what goes into a credit score. Start here: http://www.myfico.com/crediteducatio...yourscore.aspx

OP, you call yourself a newbie, so I suggest the following: if your credit history is short then it does not hurt to wait for a while (at least until you get comfortable) before applying for other credit card(s). Use this time to
(1) study the threads in this forum (and miles buzz forum), not just for best sign-on bonus cards alone but also understand you could target separate credit cards for sign-on bonus, credit cards to put spend on, and credit cards to keep b/c certain benefits (that you can use)
(2) get a better idea on your spending habits (categories and amount of regular spend that you can put on credit cards)
(3) clarify your travel preferences (e.g., coach or business/first class air travel, domestic or international, budget or comfort or high end hotel etc.)
(4) devise one or two travel goals (destination, departure city/airline preference if any, etc.)
The credit card offers will be there (at least the UA mileage explorer card offer will still be around, say for the next 3-6 months) when you are ready. If you anticipate significant credit card spend in the next few months, then I would consider jump start the process and do a quick study to get ready; otherwise take your time to learn and become knowledgeable (at least towards self-insight w.r.t. what you want to accomplish).