Yes, 12 months from closure. But close the personal one, the biz one has OPEN savings.


You will likely have to wait till one year since you applied due to a provision in the card act.

Bonus is down to $100. Keep it and use the 5% categories. Juice isn't worth the squeeze.

There are (at least) two things to consider...

The time between bonuses differs depending on the issuer and the card. In particular, Chase can be 2+ years after canceling certain cards. They will approve you with no problem but then send you a letter denying you the bonus. Others, like AMEX, will tell you right in the T&Cs how long you have to wait. Still others, like the Citi Hilton cards, it doesn't seem to matter at all if you ever cancel or wait more than a few months or not.

The best thing to do is carefully read each thread on each individual type of card. There are stories of personal experiences with re-applying, which will give you details that are more useful than blanket statements.

The other thing to consider is how your usage pattern looks to an issuer. If you get beyond the credit score, you'll find stories of people "blacklisted" because the only thing they do is hold every card a year or less. At some point, that could set off warning alarms that you aren't really a good potential customer, even tho your score is fine.

Part of your strategy should be to decide which you'll be holding and which you won't. If you try to strike a balance it can make manual reviews much easier.

i always paid in full. at the time, i called in to get credit increases only to maintain a high credit score.

MDtR-Chicago/dcpilgrim,
Thanks for your feedback! That is very helpful.

Keep reading and keep asking questions. There are a lot of people giving advice who are misinformed, but also a lot of people who are very well informed (MDtR-Chicago is one). You'll have to learn to sort through what's good and bad for yourself by learning.

I would keep and cancel differently than what you've listed above. Here's what I would do:

-SPG personal and biz: cancel both. I barely spend anything on those cards because I'm always meeting the minimum spend on other cards.

-Amex HH: keep. This is a no fee card that I'll always keep with Amex mainly to establish a longterm relationship with Amex, plus it gets me access to AXON awards with HH. I believe you can have both this and the Surpass card at the same time.

-Chase PC: keep. This card is more than worth it's annual fee because you get a free night in any PC hotel worldwide. $49 for a night in almost any decent hotel is a bargain, how much more so in some of the awesome InterContinental or Crowne Plaza that are apart of PC. On the other hand, I wouldn't necessarily discourage you from canceling this card if you're planning on getting the sign up bonus again. Just be prepared to wait 2+ years with Chase.

-Chase Freedom: keep. Now way I would cancel this card. You got the best offer that there was. You also get 30k UR points/yr by taking advantage of the 5x categories, all without a credit pull. 10k UR points isn't worth a credit pull. Definitely keep this one.

-Chase Continental: cancel. I canceled mine too. Not worth the annual fee. Hopefully you canceled before Chase merged this card with the UA card, so you can get the UA card later.

-Amex business gold: downgrade or cancel. Given that this was your oldest card, you shouldn't have canceled it.....except that it was an Amex so it's less of a big deal because Amex has a small little quirk about how they report the age of your accounts. It's likely that each of your Amex accounts will show an age equal to the age of your oldest account. So if you had this card for 10 years, even new Amex cards that you sign up for will show as 10 years old on your credit report. Even so, I still would have probably downgraded to one of the no fee business cards just to keep an ongoing relationship with Amex.


First, MDtR-Chicago was suggesting more that just not carrying a balance. He/She was suggesting that you pay your balance in full before your statement closes to keep utilization % low.

Second, a card's annual fee has nothing to do with how many you can have. Each bank (and each card even) has it's own idiosyncrasies that determine whether or not you can have multiple cards of the same brand. Citi seems to be the most liberal (careless?), allowing you to have multiples of the same card. Chase and Amex, however, are much more strict.

Thanks goAsia! I appreciate the thorough explanations.

A low Priority card annual fee gives you a free night at any IC. Wouldn't close it.

What are the benefits of closing all those accounts? If you want to avoid an annual fee and/or hope to get back on the wagon in 12 months, then go for it. It appears to be a valid strategy for Amex SPG, at least until/unless they change their T&C language again. With Chase that has way more goodies than Amex and City combined, I wouldn't close a card without getting another one from them. In any case, when you do close a card transfer your available credit to other cards.

noob question

What (paid or free) service do FT members use to monitor the hard pulls for app-o-rama and churning purposes?

Good and timely question. Before you even consider a paid service, the first 2 you need to sign up for are Credit Karma and Credit Sesame. Credit Sesame just announced their free monitoring service last week, I believe, while Credit Karma has been doing it for a while. So, you could start with these two.

Another thing to consider is applying for Discover Walmart card. No bonuses to speak of but they give you your true TU FICO score once a month for free.

thanks. just signed up for creditkarma. looks too flashy with all the bright graphics. i'm still finding some quirks in the amounts and don't know how reliable it is.

i had pulled all my free credit reports via annualcreditreport.com and also all 3 FICO scores via ScoreWatch's free trial. thus, i have a very exact and reliable picture of my credit history when comparing against creditKarma.

also had signed up for a 20k limit card which is not reflected in CreditKarma's balances (not sure why).

EDIT

nice. didnt even have to opt-into that feature on creditKarma.

If you're seeing 3 scores, they're probably not real FICO scores.

See: http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Gene...de/td-p/662549

double checked my archived reports. it was only Equifax. not sure why i said 3.