With all of the AOR craze over the last couple of years I've been patiently waiting for the right time to venture into this AOR club. Having thoughts of purchasing a home, I have previously held back on pulling the trigger. Well with our home closing last October and the increasing talk of "credit tightening", with CC company's actions starting to back some of it up, I thought it was time to jump in.

Initially I had planned to be very thorough and methodical in my whole approach. Some in this forum are unbelievable in how well-planned they have been in this process. I thought I would do the same. I would plan ahead, keep an organized folder of dozens of links, documents, spreadsheets, detailing my masterplan, and then submit it for FWF to pick it apart.

Well I was able to BEGIN the organization part but never quite made it to the submit to FWF part. I couldn't resist and began my AOR process.

I would've been glad to get everyone's input on my approach, however, between the numerous threads out there now on this, and my tendency to second guess things, I probably would've overthought it, so I'll just provide some details here and results for others to build on.

So all that said, here's the details and ongoing results:
Goals: mostly 0% no/low fee deals, followed by a Cash Back for Gas/Grocery. I threw a couple of points/miles cards in there just to make sure my AOR portfolio was well-diversified

Name: squid3
Age: 29
HHI: ~130K
Date of AOR: 1/12/2008 (yes, against conventional AOR wisdom, I did mine on a Saturday)
PM123 fakos on 1/12 before AOR: 765/783/747 (TU/EX/EQ)
Inquiries on PM123 report: 8/3/4 (TU/EX/EQ)
Existing Cards:
(Card / Limit / Balance / Util% / Age)
Discover...........$2300.00.....$99.00.....4.3%...9 years
Chase..............$5000.00......$0.00.....0.0%..11 years
NatCity Platinum...$8250.00......$0.00.....0.0%...3 years
NatCity Diamond....$6500.00......$0.00.....0.0%...4 years
Capital One Plat...$7000.00......$0.00.....0.0%...8 years
Citi/ATT Univ.....$21500.00......$0.0......0.0%...9 years
BofA (auth user)..$30000.00......$0.0......0.0%...7 years
AMEX Blue.........$12000.00......$0.0......0.0%...5 years
Lord&Taylor(store)..$500.00......$0.0......0.0%...2 years
AMEX Green Rewards..(charge)....$10.00............5 years
TOTAL CL:............$93050

Other accounts:
US Bank mortgage
Car Loan
Student Loan

Cards applied for (roughly in order of application)
Life Spring Visa (Nat City)..........0% 12 mo no fee..........Denied - too many inquiries, already have NC cards
BoA Plat + Visa targeted mailer (by phone).......0% 12 mo no fee..........Instant approval - $9500 CL
Chase Plat Visa targeted mailer................0% 15 mo $99 fee.........Approval (non instant) - $19300 CL
AMEX In Chicago......................0% 6 mo no fee..........Instant approval - $10000 CL -> $21000 realloc 11K from existing Blue
Discover Business....................0% 12 mo no fee..........Pending
AMEX Costco True Biz..........................................Approved - $3500 CL ($500 from existing AMEX Blue
Advanta Biz..........................0% 15 mo $90 fee.........Instant approval - $12500 CL
BankAtlantic Biz.....................0% 15 mo $75 fee.........Instant approval - $20000 CL
Citi Driver's Edge...................0% 12 mo no fee..........Approval 1/14/08 - $7500 CL
Citi Professional....................0% 12 mo no fee..........Approval (phone call) - $4000 CL
Discover Open Road............................................Approval - 8000 CL
Scrapbooks Visa Nat City.............0% 6 mo no fee...........Denied - email 1/14/08 - too many inquiries, already have a card with them
National Education Worldpoints BoA...0% 12 mo $30 fee.........Approval - $10000 CL
Citi AAdvantage......................20K AA miles after $750..Approval - $9700 CL
Chase Sony Rewards...................5K Sony Rewards w/purch..Approval - $7000 CL
I also got a CL increase in ATT Universal from $21.5K to $30K
Total approved new CC CLs: $120500.00

PM123 results post AOR:
(CRA/CI/FAKO)
1/13/08.....TU/18/744...EX/5/780...EQ/5/745
1/14/08.....TU/18/744...EX/5/781...EQ/5/745
1/15/08.....TU/19/742...EX/6/779...EQ/6/742
1/16/08.....TU/19/742...EX/6/779...EQ/6/742
1/17/08.....TU/19/742...EX/6/768...EQ/6/742
1/18/08.....TU/19/742...EX/6/768...EQ/6/729
1/19/08.....TU/19/742...EX/7/766...EQ/6/729
1/22/08.....TU/19/731...EX/7/767...EQ/6/729
1/23/08.....TU/19/731...EX/7/767...EQ/6/729
1/24/08.....TU/19/731...EX/7/767...EQ/6/729
1/29/08.....TU/17/739...EX/7/767...Eq/6/729

Thanks again to all in this forum!

---------------------------------

Pending a BT to my checking and a $6500 BT check coming from Citi, I should have about $75K in liquid funds to do something with. 18K will need to be liquid in < 6 months to payoff AMEX.

Ways I could've improved my approach (some of these are suggestions mentioned in this thread, thanks for those):
1) Been more organized/prepared in my approach. I had a good idea in my mind of what I planned to do but planning it out ahead of time with a more organized "next step" type of approach would've prevented some of the mishaps
2) Gotten feedback from FWF before starting the process.
3) Should've added a couple more business cards, Citi would have been good to have a better shot at reallocation since my Citi Aadvantage CL was kind of useless
4) Not applied for the National City cards or cancelled my other 2 cards prior to AOR
5) Could've been a little more efficient with some of the BT fees

My thought is to try to realloc/consolidate my current AMEX Blue $12K to In Chicago, and $5K current Chase and some of Sony Chase into new Chase. I have to look into the ATT Universal more to see if I can do anything with my fresh $30K in existing CL. I'm not sure if I can do anything with current $30K BofA since I am only an AU.

Holy-Moly. Nice instant approval numbers. Great going, and good luck.

In my experience with the AMEX:IN card, you can request a higher limit as soon as you receive the card to do a balance transfer. I received $10k initially as well but requested that it bumped to $20k for a balance transfer and they did it without blinking an eye. YMMV of course.

markkundinger said:So far, looks like it will be pretty successful. What are you going to do with the 0% money?

Here's what you did wrong:

- You can get non-targeted Chase apps with 0%, 12mo, and only a $75 fee. (then again, the Sony card probably has the lower fee).

- I probably wouldn't have applied for two National City cards.

- I would have recommended at least a Chase and Citibank business card. Then you could reallocate lots of personal credit to them, max them out, and "hide" the balances. Actually, there might still be time to do this.

Thanks for the comments, I agree, the Scrapbooks Nat City was a last minute one that in hindsight I probably should've just ignored, it's only a 6 mo one anyhow. I'll have to check my Chase mailer when I get home, it may have been $75.

I'll have more time tonight, now that I know I was approved for 3 Citi and 2 Chase, might as well push it to see if I can get one more of each.

I also only have 6 months on the AMEX

I have some thoughts on what I would like to do that I can lay out in more detail hopefully tonight.

With AMEX you can reallocate your credit among cards online by yourself. I wouldn't close your old card, but you can easily move $10,000 CL from one card to the other instantly.

I ended up combining 4 AMEX cards into 1 card last AOR (over a year ago) and ended up with a 54,000 credit line on my IN:LA card. I didn't get FR, but this was before the CLI button even existed. After BT was done I moved the CL among the remaining cards to try and avoid sticking out over $25,000 limit, even tho at that point it was probably a moot point.

Good luck with the AOR!

Emil

jakeru said:Could you tell us more about the 15-mo 0% no fee BOA targeted mailer? Was is business or personal? Platinum Plus Mastercard?

That's pretty hawt.

Ah, I just updated OP, I flipped the terms when I typed in the Chase and BoA cards wrong, the Chase is 15 months and the BoA is 12. I knew there was a reason that I took the Chase offer even with the $99 fee

The BoA was Platinum Plus Visa and the Chase was Chase Platinum

MikeR397 said:Thrilla said:In my experience with the AMEX:IN card, you can request a higher limit as soon as you receive the card to do a balance transfer. I received $10k initially as well but requested that it bumped to $20k for a balance transfer and they did it without blinking an eye. YMMV of course.yes, it is the AMEX crack CLI (you can get a CLI online). DO NOT ask for more than 24.9k CL unless you are really in the mood for an AMEX FR and probal insertion.

FYI, my family has 7 AMEX IN cards, all with $20,000-24,900CL's (202k HHI) for the last 6 months and I made it through (so far) without a FR . AMEX really likes a high HHI when giving big CL's and not FR'ing in my opinion.

What is HHI? Am I in a foreign country? Plz someone educate me. Op, Once you get the BT done on your new cards, do you still use them for purchases or will that affect the fees? Thanks in advance!

As to what to do with my 0% available BT lines, I must admit I'm somewhat torn.

I currently have a MM savings account that still has about 4 months left of guaranteed 5.25 APY, but after that ??? I already have Ameritrade and Fidelity accounts, so even parking some of it in a brokerage account with a nice sign-up bonus may be difficult.

In addition, with all of this A/A talk, I'm not sure how aggressive I want to be.

My post earlier about plans for the 0% funds was that I was considering paying off my student loans (16K at 7%), since I am likely to be phased out of the interest deduction in 2008 unless the IRS really steps it up with income level increases. But with rates possibly decreasing further, I thought I would take my chances so I'm going to skip that plan.

Most likely I will just tread cautiously and watch my util rates. Park the $ in the MM savings (as soon as work on getting it into my checking). I'll have to continue to consider my options for after April. Maybe win333 will have found a company we can buy by then.

Rorer714 said:squid3 said:sushii said:What is HHI? Am I in a foreign country? Plz someone educate me. Op, Once you get the BT done on your new cards, do you still use them for purchases or will that affect the fees? Thanks in advance!

If you aren't posting comments/questions specifically related to my AOR (your questions are really unrelated), then you should probably post in the flame-free thread link

That said, HHI = Household Income and in 99% of the cases I would say you should NOT use a card you are carrying a 0% balance on for purchases. Post your question in the flame-free thread if you want a further explanation as to why.
Squid3, aren’t we being a little harsh?
Intro 0% BT only: Do not make any purchases.
Intro 0% BT & Purchases: Defiantly make purchases. The reason being some CC (probably most) will permit you to use the grace period when paying of the BT. I have done this with Discover (Open Road) & Chase (Sony).
Intro 0% BT w/promo: Make purchase, pay immediately then do BT.
Intro 0% BT & Purchases w/promo: Defiantly make purchases.
There are probably other situations but I think you get the idea.

I wouldn't say it was being harsh, but ok.

Being harsh would be making fun of you for "defiantly" making purchases.

"AMEX FRs, A/A, Credit Crunch...ha! They got nothin'. I'll show them, ring me up! I'm over my limit? I don't care! I'm defiantly making purchases!"