StartinSanDiego

For the newcomers hitting their first app-o-rama: Your first cards are the easiest to get. You have yet to feel the impact of high spend requirements, multiple recent applications, a thin credit file, multiple credit cards with balances (even very, very small balances) and a big fat cumulative line of credit with any given bank.

So, I'm in the slow and steady camp. This hobby can take a lot of time and effort. It's easy to miss a payment, or a spend threshold, balances not paid in full or ???

Several of you upthread have half a dozen or so new credit cards. Deal with those for the next 3-6 months, then do it again. The heavy hitters do aors every 90 days, which will be here just about the time your spend requirements are met and your new points are available to use.

Don't worry. Credit cards are not disappearing any time soon.

zmant06

^Great advice. I just completed my second mini-AoR and will evaluate my progress in a few months.

November:
AAdvantage Personal Mastercard 50k, instant approval
WN Plus 50k, instant approval
Hilton HHonors Amex 40k, instant approval

December:
WN Premier 50k (targeted), instant approval
US Air Barclay MC 35k, instant approval
Alaska Airlines 50k Visa, instant approval

FWIW myFICO was 780 and is now down to 765.

PainCorp

It will drop more before it recovers.

Tronic

I'm considering applying for the following cards in the following order this weekend:

1) US Bank Club Carlson 85k
2) Barclays US Airways 35k (second)
3) Chase Ink Bold 50k
4) Chase British Airways 100k

Alts:
Barclays Lufthansa 50k
BOA Alaska Airlines 50k

I guess the only reason I'm posting this to inquire about subbing the Lufthansa card or Alaska card for the US Airways card.

I thinking about booking 2 off peak US Airways awards to Europe for 2015 and perhaps 2 CX first awards to Maldives. Other than that we hit the Caribbean yearly.

I have enough US points for the Europe trip now and am about 75k AA short for the Maldives trip.

Thoughts, or should I just go ahead with my 4?

pinguy

Others are more experienced at this than me but, my two cents is it all depends on how much you're comfortable with putting on the cc's every month. I'm sure some that read this thread could get 75k on AA in a very short time. Others may need a year or more.

This probably doesn't apply to you, and apologies in advance for hijacking your question but let me use this reply to say what others have said. Like StartinSanDiego said, start slow. Crawl, walk and then run if you're comfortable running. I consider myself a smart guy and I'm pretty organized about this stuff but just last month, I setup an automatic payment at Citi to pay the balance in full on due date. I had a typo in the bank account number and my bank rejected it. With interest charge and return check charge, it cost me a couple hundred bucks! I can absorb that but it really bummed me that I was so stupid about it.

StartinSanDiego

Hey pinguy, give the Citi a call and tell them what happened. They are highly likely to waive those fees if you have a good track record with them. I have to do that myself with Chase this week-- something slipped by and I paid a days worth of interest on a small fortune in charges. It's against my philosophy to pay such a fee... I've had good luck over the years getting such fees waived on occasion.

PainCorp

Yeah, I miscalculated how much I had paid vs charges for a bill and was left with $200 in charges that got charged interest with Chase. They looked and saw I pay in full every month and waived it without even asking.

KennyBSAT

+1, a couple of times with different banks over the years. Managing 30+ cards as I now do, nothing is left to chance. The only cards that are not paid on or before the statement date (not the due date) are the ones with 0% teaser rates.

FlightNurse

the 2.5K CL was becasue of the card type, this was a big issue with the Hawaiian cards, as well as the US Cards, they had to two levels, the "choice" card and the "regular" card. Your first one was the choice card and the second one was the regualr card with a lower sign up bonus. It's a classic bait and switch but the CC companies can get away with it...

FlightNurse

The biggest issue is, the noobie do not want to read this thread or others, and educate themselves on this game/hobby, they want the experienced one to "tell" them what to do... So there is 157 pages in this thread, educate yourself on this game and learn something... THis is money we are talking about and at times they do get it until it is too late... I haven't gone after any new CC since my last AOR in June, and don't plan to until Feb...

FlightNurse

Sarcasm you are new to this, how much reading of this thread have you done? before jumping in educate yourself by reading THEN ask questions..

BTW, not calling you out, but I haven't heard of any CVS not carrying The Bean, some are taking longer to restock then others... So why do you need a walmart to play this game?

FlightNurse

Pain thanks, but once again we have a noob that want info spoon feed and of course get mad when it doesn't happen... I'm still blown away that these people aren't willing to spend anytime educating themselves on this game before jumping in with thier credit as we all know it is very easy to get in touble with this game... Remember the HIC???? I wonder what happened to the people who bought 10 of thousands of dollars worth of them, I wonder how they got thier money back...

farwest101

Haven't heard of any CVS not carrying VRs? Come on. There are literally hundreds of posts talking about CVS' that don't carry VRs. Of the dozen near me, 4 don't carry VRs and several have gone to cash only when new managers rolled into town. And in lower class neighborhoods, your odds of finding VRs that can be bought with CCs are slim and none. And even IF they carry them, the restocking process is absurdly slow in some stores - literally weeks go by without new stock - and then they put a single pack of 10 on the rack and express "surprise" when a day later they are all sold.

As for noobs asking questions, just answer the question or ignore it. Berating noobs for asking is pointless - if they had any intention of wanting to learn rather than being spoonfed, they would have done 5 minutes Googling and found the answer for themselves.

ktkw

I agree that people should read before asking questions. I've checked my CVS everyday for over a week now and there has been absolutely not change in the gift card section meaning they havent restocked. I asked when they would restock and they said they get new shipments every tue/wed. It has passed and they havent restocked so I have no idea if they will ever have it. In addition I don't have a car which is one of the reasons I don't have great access to many stores.

I've done my research reading 30+ pages of this thread and many other thread on multiple forums while following around a dozen or more travel/points blogs learning about credit scores, different card, loyalty programs etc. I've ruled out the most common ways of manufacturing spending. I was asking a question that isn't really a clear cut yes/no and was looking for insight from people with experience doing a lot of apps/hoping someone would catch something that I did not see. If i'm missing a commonly known way of MS without using CVS/WM/AP then I'll admit that I should've read more.

You probably have helped many here and know a lot more than I do but im pretty sure there were times where you were stuck in a unique situation and maybe just werent lucky enough to find the answer while trawling through the many pages of the forum.

FlightNurse

Well one of the newst CVS I hit is right in the middle of the "hood" and I don't have a problem spending 5K a day at it, they usually have three and at times four racks FULL of beans... I guess I'm just lucky... I also find it funny that people have issues with the VR web site and I, who loads 10K a day of beans have only had one issue and it was my fault... Again I'm just lucky...