Hello FT,

I started my credit journey in April 2012, with my first card, a BOFA Cash Rewards card that came with a 700$ limit. I used my card for the first six months, always leaving a small balance. In October 2012, I applied for the Citi Forward and the Discover More card and was instantly approved for both with a 1,500 limit (I am a student. I wait tables and I do some data entry, and I make anywhere from 12-15k yearly..for now.) I waited another month and then in November 2012, I decided to push my luck and I applied for the PRG and was instantly approved (I was amazed because I thought it was going to be a denial, mainly because of the income I used, which was 12k.) I mainly got the card to establish a history with Amex ( I also decided to apply for a Chase Freedom at the same time, but I was met with an in-progress notice, and I ended up being denied because my history was to short, and they told me to try in another 6 months.) I decided to not apply for anything else until the end of April/ beginning of May 2013. On May 1st of this year I decided to apply once again for the Chase Freedom, and to my surprise, I was instantly approved for a limit of 2,400.

My question is now, I would like to add a travel card to my list of cards. But I need help selecting what I should I apply for and when. I currently have 4 inquiries on my EX report (Citi, Amex, Chase, Chase.) 2 on TU (Discover and Amex) and 2 on EQ (Amex and AT&T when I bought a new phone last summer.) I live in Los Angeles, and the 2 primary airlines here are American and United, but I also like Delta and Southwest, and unfortunately have never had any good experiences with United, so the other three airlines are the ones I primarily fly on. However, I have been flying American more often. When my family and I do stay in Hotels, we usually stay at Holiday Inn's, Marriott's or Sheraton's (it just depends where we are traveling to...and this determines where we stay.) I would like to add a hotel/airline card to my list of cards, but I am not sure how to go about this. I'd like to start getting/miles and points and maybe use them for future trips and such. My current scores are: EX (736 on Chase Freedom letter, 733 on myfico yesterday) TU:728 (myfico) EQ: 723. I need help determining a strategy of when I should I apply, do I even have a chance of getting approved?

Any advice or help would be appreciated.

Given your short credit history, apply for 1 new card at a time. For travel needs, I recommend either Travelocity AMEX or Priceline Rewards. Both are issued by Barclays. You can go to their site for details. Note that Travelocity points redeemed at 20k intervals are worth 2 cents each.

I would start with a modest AOR of the AA personal and business cards, the 4 chase cards, the SPG cards, and the Hilton cards (personal and business).

If you have a wife/family that is wanting to "churn with", then you can apply for same with their name.

This will net you 8-16 cards, which, while it's not particularly exciting, it is a nice start.

Shel- I did look into the travelocity and priceline cards and I found they are a good fit for me. But what makes me worried is I know that Barclay's is really account sensitive, so it makes me worried that they'll see I recently opened a account. Otherwise, I would apply, but I'm not sure if I would be approved because of how sensitive to new accounts they are.

Churn-I was actually looking at applying for the Citi AAdvantage (personal) and either the Marriott Rewards or the premier version. I do have a gf, but not a family yet. I don't want too many cards as I really want only a total of 6-7. I am planning to close my PRG in October because I don't use it enough to make it worthwhile. I just want to have cards that I'm going to use and keep for a while.

What makes me worried though is do I have any chance of being approved? I fear that my income will get me denied for many of the travel cards I would like, even though my payment history is excellent, and my scores are decent as well.

I would steer clear of Churn's idea of a "modest" AOR.... That is still a bit aggressive for someone in your situation. Since you are a student with minimum income you need to sit down and figure out your monthly expenses and determine what you can realistically spend on the cc's. Yes, there are ways to boost this (see manufactured and/or accelerated spend), but you have to be comfortable doing stuff like that. You don't want to get stuck in a position where now you are paying interest on your purchases because that would quickly negate all of the points your earn.

I'm not sure what your tuition situation is, but if you can pay for it or your books out of pocket you can include that in your projected costs. You might even push out your AOR a few weeks just so you can include the the spring semester to meet minimum spend (several cards are spend $X,XXX in 3 months but you need to give yourself a week or two buffer to allow it to post to your account in time).

All that being said, I would go with one of the Citi AA cards (check the wiki in that thread as there should be one with 30k points for $1500/3mo spend). OR get the personal Southwest card (50k points for $2k/3mo spend). And then get another Amex as it will be backdated to your PRG open date. Even though its not a "travel" card, I'd look at the Blue Cash Preferred or Everyday. BCE is a no fee and has a lower min spend but it has less benefits and bonus cash than the BCP. If you get the BCP you can always downgrade it to BCE at the 1yr mark. Check the web for the best offers on these (should be $250 for BCP and $150 for BCE). If you read the thread on the BCP you will see that you can buy giftcards at grocery stores and end up with 3-6% cashback on the first $6k spend annually. And you'd get 2-3% cashback on gas if you have wheels to get around in.

Once you get some additional income to justify your spending ability to the banks you can then "move up" to the better cards like the Chase Sapphire Preferred ($3k/3mo min spend), or Amex SPG ($5k/6mo spend).

Personally based on the cards you have and the spending you're likely to do based on your income, I'd look into a better grocery/gas card rather than going with an airline card, first anyway.

I'm a big fan of the Sallie Mae World Mastercard. 5% Grocery, 5% Gas up to $250/month on each with a 10% bonus for linking a upromise account and having a Sallie Mae HYS(which pays .85% APY a decent amount.) making it really 5.5%. Yes, the limit is lower than the $6k a year on the BCP, but it only works out about $120 a year difference and based on your finances you'll have to do a fair bit of manufactured spend to hit the limit for BCP, which seems like an awful lot of work for $10 a month difference, that and you get 5.5% on gas, which is the best out there up to the limit(which unless you're doing serious manufactured spend isn't going to make much of a difference.)

I do recommend the Southwest card though because the sign up bonus is nice, provided you can manufacture/have enough spending to get the sign up bonus. It has the added benefit of 6,000 points a year which pays for the $99 annual fee it carries.

I'd also look into the PenFed Premium Travel Rewards card which is 5% on all airline travel, and has a $200 sign up bonus with a $2,5000/3 month spend. I'm not sure about your likelihood of approval.

Skitch- After I pay my phone bills (it's my major one @105$) I can spend about 5-600 a month (it depends on my tips, but it is going to be starting to get busier, so that will lead me to get higher=more spending. I put 12k as a conservative figure as that is what my income is around, but it depends as I said on my tips and hours worked.). I've never had any issue in paying my cards off in full right before the statement date, and I always leave anywhere from 1-3% of a balance when applying for a card. I pay for school, and my tuition is about 46$ a unit, so about 3 units is 138 (X3 for the other classes and it equates to 414$+ Parking permit+books+other misc fees, and it gets to up 800$ easily.) I was actually thinking that If I apply for the AA card and get approved, I won't be planning to app for anything else, but If I don't get approved for it, then I'll aim for the Southwest card, and the BCE. I can easily reach the spend as I run quite a bit for my income (I run easily 500-600 through my cards) and at times I will use my cards for some of the stuff that my parents need to buy like tickets for a show or any household things and then they reimburse me back a week or two later, and so far no issue. I was also looking at the get the BCE because I drive quite a bit and my truck eats gas pretty quick so I think this would be a good alternative to my Cash Rewards card. Once I graduate from school in a couple of years and my income is higher and I've got less inquiries, I'll app for the SPG and the CSP, but right now, I don't think they would do me much good. My key question is, based on the stats I provided, do I have any chance of approval?

Shaudius- The only thing is, I already have cards that give me gas/grocery, which is why I wanted to add an airline card to start earning points/miles for future trips and such. I mean I've got the Cash Rewards (Gas) Forward (Food, Cell phone bill, movies.) More (Rotating categories.) PRG (large purchases and purchase protection, and on occasion Gas and groceries.) Freedom (rotating categories/ large purchases), so I'd like to add a travel card for future trips and such. For Sallie Mae, do you need to have a student loan account through them? I don't have any student loans since I pay out of pocket every semester, and never needed to take the loans. I'll look into the Southwest card, since I can reach the spend rather easily and don't have a problem with paying the annual fee. I do fly typically 3-4 times a year. I also like the Penfed Travel Rewards card, but I'm not a member, and I hear there requirements are quite high to receive anyone of their credit products. I don't think I would be approved for them just yet, maybe in a couple of years....

Yeah, I didn't mean to say you didn't it was more a matter of why settle for 2% in a category when there are 5-6% options in it. So let me break my thinking a little bit.

The way I view it is this. If you're not a churner, not looking to do a ton of manufactured spend and spend like a fairly regular college student there are 5-7 cards you should have:

1. a 5+% Gas Card - For me this is Salle Mae, others prefer the BCP, its slightly better but requires you to spend more to justify the annual fee.

2. a 5+% Grocery Card - For me this is also Sallie Mae. Another option is the Fort Knox credit union(also 5% no spend limit.) http://www.fortknoxfcu.org/visa.html

3. a 5+% Travel Card - for me this is the PenFed card. Its the best in category. Airline specific ones are good but they won't be 5%. They will give you a sign up bonus and other perks if you care about which airline you fly on.

4. a 5+% Restaurant Card - This is your Forward card, the problem being that its not actually 5% unless you use the redeem for a student loan check and manipulate it to be cashable by you. Its really 3.33% right now if you don't do that, which is still best in category.

5. A general purpose card for all other purchases. You want this to be the highest percent possible. The best currently out there is 2% in general, for purchases under about $15 this used to be the Chase Freedom card. Unfortunately starting August 1st the 10 bonus points for every purchase is going away and its turning into 10% bonus on everything include rotating categories.

6. Optional 5% rotater to cover categories above.

7. A second 5% rotater to cover categories above.

*8. Any other 5% card that covers an unusual spending category or some place you frequent a lot. This won't necessarily be a credit card and could be a store charge card that won't report a limit but will save you some cash.

As far as the Sallie Mae card is concerned you don't need to have student loans with them, I'm not sure if a student loan relationship helps or not. I would imagine it doesn't as the card is through barclaycard(and the app is from them.) Barclaycard has been said to be a tougher card to get than some by people on this forum and elsewhere, so there's that but the worst that could happen would be to get rejected and have nothing to show for the hard pull, since that's the case and you do need a card to fill the travel category, and already have some decent cards that can fill it, I'd apply for a travel card first.

As far as PenFed yeah, I'm a member of an organization that they give auto membership to, I'm not sure if that helps or not but its something to consider.

I was in a similar situation to you recently, and in fact was carrying some of the same cards.

Here is my story if it helps, I'm not sure if it will or not.

I have a substantial amount of student loans(mostly public but some private), we're talking 6 figures here(didn't really have much of a choice in the matter, wanted to go to grad school paid off what I could.)

I'm just starting my 30s. Throughout college I held a card with a credit union through my school. $500 credit limit. Paid as agreed for a ton of years. Went to grad school, took out a bunch of loans, graduated grad school, was unemployed for a few months, had a couple of dings on this small limit card, had the card closed.

About a year later joined Chase as a banking customer. Applied for a Freedom Card. Instant approval $1,500 limit. Held this card for about 2 years.

Last year making mid 5 figures applied for a Citi Forward card, instant approval $6,500 limit.

A couple months ago. Still making mid 5 figures, credit score for TU about 750.

Applied for Capital One Cash Rewards(1% card with 50% cash back yearly.) Have sort of a relationship with Capital One, sort of not. I had an IRA with ING Direct, now Capital One 360. As well as a savings and checking account with ING(only like $50 combined in the checking/savings, the IRA only has a few grand.)

Instant approval. 10k limit.

Applied for the following cards pretty much simultaneously a little bit after the Capital One Cash Rewards(about a month):

Sallie Mae Upromise World Mastercard - Have an existing relationship with Sallie Mae(student loans), instant approval $10k limit.

2 days after,

Applied for a PenFed travel card. Work for an organization that gets auto membership if they apply, no other existing relationship with PenFed. Instant approval $20k, require me to send paystubs(probably to verify income, maybe to verify I work for the organization.)

Had an offer from Southwest in the mail for the Southwest credit card. I fly Southwest about once every 1.5-2 months. Have a rapid rewards account, but by no means an incredibly frequently flyer. Have had that Chase account now for almost a decade, thousands of dollars have gone through it but by no means 10s of thousands. This was a pre-approved offer, get the premier card, $10k limit.

AAoA - 4 years 10 months(before the latest ones.)

Based on my experience I'm not sure if you'll have a good shot or not, I had a lot going for me as I happened to have potentially good relationships with all the places that just happen to have the cards I wanted, or I could justify why I was applying for them. My limits were fairly high(at least to me making what I do) so who knows maybe you'll still get these cards but with lower limits(I know the PenFed one has a lower limit of 5k.)

Well, I decided to test my luck and see what happens. First, I went to my BOFA accounts and asked for a CLI, got it to 1,000. Then I applied for the Southwest card, got an instant approval, logged on and found my limit was 3.6k (not bad.) Then I applied for the Citi AAdvantage card (the one found on this website) and was denied (they said everything was good, but they wanted something that was close to a 5k limit and to try again later.) Also applied for the BCE, but got a needs further review message. Overall it worked out okay.

I got a pending message on my first Amex but when I checked their status website about an hour later it said I had been approved... I can't remember if my second card automatically popped up on my account page or if it took a few days. Might be worth checking if the suspense is killing you

https://www262.americanexpress.com/eaol/welcome.do

Keep in mind that most banks/card issuers do a hard pull when you initiate a CLI.

Skitch- I saw clicked on the link and it still says in progress. And I realized that, but I'm glad I did get a small increase, albeit a little bit small.