Depends on the bank - USBank turned me down flat for too many inquires in the past six months with a handful of pulls.

^ I was thinking the exact same thing.
It's humblebrag like this that ruins a lot of newbies' credit.

[QUOTE=gloreglabert;20713443]:confused: You don't get swamped with 'too many inquiry' denials with those kind of numbers?/QUOTE]

No, it's not a problem. My personal theory (not based on anything) is that 'too many inquiries' is just a generic quote that's generated because they have to give you some reason if they are denying you.

10+ years, average age is 3 years.

I don't think it's possible to ruin your credit with inquiries other than very fleetingly. An inquiry can be the start of an account that leads to default or other trouble, but it's not the inquiry that's the trouble.

I think this is true. I was once denied for too many inquiries by Citi when I had six on the report they pulled. I've since been approved by Citi when I had 21 on the report they pulled. I think it is more important how old they are. If it is 6 within the last three months it might be a big deal. If you have 21 and the most recent is 6 months old, it might not matter. The concern is that you are doing an app-o-rama. Many banks don't want to be part of your applying for six or more cards. They worry that you will charge them up and walk away. I think age of accounts matters for this. If your average age of accounts is 10 years and you have had accounts with this bank that long it might not matter as much as if your average age of accounts is one year and you have never had an account with them before.

Okay, so that's still a pretty healthy history. I think the issue many new guys run into is that when you first start churning, your average age plummets, since only churners generally have tons of existing accounts to prop up age. 18 months ago, my average age was 5+ years...currently it's less than 2 years, courtesy of aggressive churning starting a bit over a year ago. A bank seeing 10+ inquiries on a report with ~1 year average history is probably going to be pretty spooked.

My official FICO score took a nosedive from about 755 to 705 over the past six months. In the meantime I've opened about 10 new accounts. My AAoA dropped from about 6 years to 3 years. Definitely going to slow it down but it's a bit alarming. So not sure how others do it. I do have the benefit of being an AU on parents account opened in the late 80s which helps.

I also have learned a lesson that I shouldn't close free cards which I've done twice over the past few years. Though they were Chase cards so I may have needed to anyway.

Even if you close cards, they will still continue to add to your AAoA for 10 years before they drop off of your credit report.

You misunderstood what I meant.

I meant that a lot of newbies hear about people talking about X number of inquiries and still getting approved so they decide to apply haphazardly to random cards because they think they'll get approved as well.

They don't and all they have to show is a wasted inquiry.

I have no problem with what you're doing, hell, I do it too. I just think that people who have a wider audience should be careful about talking nonchalantly about having X number of inquiries without also informing about their AAoA. So that someone who's not as informed as you will not mistakenly assume that if you can do it, so can he.

Credit Karma can be useful to help track credit, but it's rating system is NOT FICO - 10 pulls vs 9 on FICO are going to have very little effect, unless it's an isolated recent pull. I have 20+ pulls on EX, and 2-3 on TU/EQ - net delta of about 20 FICO points for the difference. I doubt any bank is going to use CK's scoring method when evaluating you for a product; sometimes the numbers are similar, many times they aren't.

I've had Ds and Fs on both average age of accounts, and inquiries - that certainly doesn't stop Chase, Citi ,BofA, or AmEX from approving me for new trade lines.

It's a free service, and it's useful - but I'd just recommend that you keep in mind that the tool is limited when it comes to terms of gauging your FICO - which is used during an application.

If you don't have a cheap / free way to get your FICO, the estimator does a pretty good job of getting you close.
http://www.myfico.com/ficocreditscoreestimator/

Agreed, I have no problems with Citi, Chase, AmEX, BofA, etc - but US Bank barely gave me a card when I applied for the Cash+, and 6+ months later still won't give me a CLI. Although the form letter told me too many inquiries - the underwriter was more concerned about available credit, and the number of new accounts. US Bank does seem to be way more conservative, and that is their prerogative.

So I'll just sit out any of their other offers like the Club Carlson card.

So it sounds like 20 inquiries from EX is not unusual and won't necessarily prevent me from a successful AoR. My AAoA is about 7 years (20 year spotless credit history), but I've had a number of inquiries due to 2 refis and 2 cars -- and maybe the 15 credit cards in the last year had an effect, too. ;)

It's been 4+ months since my last AoR, I just don't know when the bubble will burst. So that's why I wondered how you all do it having been in the game for many years.

After a AoR, I tend to wait at least 3 months for my FICO to recover a bit, and make certain that no more than 4 credit cards are reporting a balance to my CR.
(More than 4 cards reporting can drop my FICO 10-30 points, even if they're small balances.)

US Bank and Bank of America are unique in that they use other sources besides the three credit bureaus. They also use information about you in your Advanced Resolution Services (ARS, a subsidiary of Visa USA Inc.) report. It can be frozen just like a credit report.

Interesting. Both pulled EX on me. I've had multiple BoA cards and they exclusively pull EX on me.

Hell, I'm not complaining...I'm glad that I don't have to run into ARS.

They still pull one of the regular 3 CRAs. ARS is supplementary.