Swish! Fight the Power Mini-AOR 1.0 (All apps finalized 5/12/08)

Thx to FWF for inspiring a very small and experimental tiny-AOR last year that worked out *very* well. Time to move to the next phase.

Goals:

- Diversify personal credit for the day that AMEX (current primary) takes adverse action
- Obtain Citi cards from 2 credit "buckets" outside of what I'm stuck in now
- Obtain Citi cards with 0% that runs 12 mos from BT within 1st 12 mos, to use next year
- Obtain sufficient business CL to comfortably bury maybe $15K-$25K at 0%
- Increase cushion for util% by adding new CL

Questions:

- I am in the land of Equifax and expect Citi (if not others) to choke mid-AOR due to the inquiry pile-on. Would like suggestions on what order to do things in.

- Very interested in confirm/deny on whether the Citi apps I'm planning are in different CL "buckets" than the three cards I have (Professional, Sears MC, CitiBusiness). I suspect that the Professional and Sears MC are in one bucket, and the CitiBusiness is in another.

- What would you toss, what would you keep, what would you add?

- Does the Discover Business card report to the personal CR or not? Comments in threads suggest that the reps say it does, but people who actually have the card do not see it on their personal CR.

Inputs:

FICOs are around 750 on TU (2 inqs, 3/08) and EX (8 inqs, several are mortgage, most recent 10/17/07). EQ is at 717, 1 inq, within last 6 months.
Personal utilization is 11.5% (ish).
6 new accounts opened in 2nd half of 2007.
Average age 3 years 4 mos (EQ).
Researched who will pull what and inquiry sensitivities at FW and CreditBoards (incl CreditPulls DB).

Existing CL:

Mortgage, $340K-ish
Chase Visa Platinum, $13000 CL/$1286 BAL (no CLI available)
CitiFinancial Retail (store card), $25000 CL/$7078 BAL (@ 0% thru 5/08)
GE Money Net Rewards Visa, $3500 CL/$0 BAL (no CLI available)
Sears (Citi) MC, $10000 CL/$2674 BAL (@ 0% thru 5/09, no CLI available)
GEMB Relax The Back (store card), $25000 CL/$8829 BAL (@ 0% through 11/08)
GEMB BrandSmart MC, $25000 CL/$0 BAL (no soft CLI available)
BofA AMEX, $25000 CL/$4071 BAL (@ 1% thru 12/08) (no CLI available)
CitiProfessional MC, $1500 CL/$0 BAL (no CLI available - "at maximum")
Home Depot (store card), $15000 CL/$ 600 BAL (@ 0% thru 9/08)
Delta Skymiles Platinum AMEX (primary use card) $24900 CL/$181 BAL
AMEX Green, no limit/$0 BAL
BofA AAA Visa (secondary use card), $27800 CL/$948 BAL (no CLI available)
Capital One MC, $5400 CL/$0 BAL (no CLI available)

BofA Power Rewards Platinum Plus Business Visa #1, $17000 CL/$0 BAL (2.9% through 1/09 offer)
BofA Power Rewards Platinum Plus Business Visa #2, $27000 CL/$8800 BAL (@ 0% through 6/08)
AMEX SimplyCash Business, $30000 CL/$6100 BAL
CitiBusiness MC, $16100 CL/$13700 BAL (no CLI available)

Personal CL: $201,100
Bus CL: $90,100
Tot CL: $291,200
Personal w/o store cards: $136,100
Tot w/o store cards: $226,200

Targeted cards & expected inquiries in planned order of application:

BUS: BankAtlantic (Juniper) Rewards Business Card 0% for 15 mo $75 capped - TU
PER: Baylor Alumni Visa Platinum 0% 12 mo for BT with app no fee - TU **Consolidate personal balances here for higher CL**
PER: BofA NEA WorldPoints AMEX 0% 12 mo $30 BT capped - EX
PER: Discover More targeted 0% for life (rec'd offer in the mail 4/12) $75 BT capped, make min 2 purch/mo starting in Jan 09 - EX
BUS: M&T (Elan) Business 0% 6 mo for BT with app only no fee - EQ, sensitivity unknown **Consolidate business balances here for higher CL**
BUS: CitiBusiness with 15K TY points - copy the URL at the end of this link if it doesn't work from FWF 0% 12 mo from first BT no fee - EQ, inquiry sensitive (unconfirmed)
PER: Citi Associates Bank Platinum Visa 0% 12 mo from first BT no fee - EQ, inquiry sensitive
PER: Citi Home Rebate 0% 12 mo from first BT 3% fee uncapped - EQ, inquiry sensitive - wow I may use the rebates!
-- FREEZE Equifax HERE --
BUS: Chase Business Platinum Visa 0% 12 mo $99 BT capped - frozen EQ, should roll to TU, "less sensitive"
PER: National City Lifespring Health Everyday Rewards Visa Platinum 0% 12 mo no fee - TU. 1 instance of EQ/TU dual pull in Creditpulls DB, so doing this after the EQ freeze.
PER: Juniper IFly Visa 0% 12 mo $50 BT capped - TU ** added after other apps done**
-- FREEZE TransUnion HERE --
-- Maybe freeze Experian --

Scratched specifically due to Citi adverse action tendencies coming to light:

PER: Citi AT&T Platinum 0% 12 mo from first BT 3% fee uncapped - EQ, inquiry sensitive (should I expect decline here due to app count?)

Scratched for other reasons:

PER: WAMU Platinum mail-targeted offer, wasn't 0% on BT, it was 0% on purchases. Ixnayed!
PER: Discover More non-targeted offer (in favor of targeted offer), 0% until May 09 $75 BT cap
BUS: US Bank Business (Select Rewards?) 0% 6 mo for BT with app only 3% uncapped BT (ick)
BUS: Bank of America Business Power Rewards Plus, online offer at signout, 0% 9 mos BT 3% uncapped - EX soft. Offer went away.
PER: Linux Fund (US Bank) Visa Platinum Personal 0% 12 mo for BT with app only $75 capped, dumped in favor of Baylor
PER: Citi Dividend Platinum Select 0% 12 mo from first BT 3% fee uncapped, dumped in favor of Citi Home Rebate
BUS: Chase Professional 0% 6 mo $75 BT capped, dumped in favor of Chase Business
PER: BofA NEA Platinum Plus Visa 0% 12 mo $30 BT capped, dumped in favor of NEA AMEX - the Visa allows app to be considered for a different card with a higher interest rate.
BUS: Discover Business 0% til May 09 $75 BT capped - kicked out mid-AOR due to twitchiness over personal Discover app, and this post.

Other items:

- 4/13/08, Requested CLI on both BofA personal cards (soft inq expected), got 5-7 bus day msgs. Both cards were CLI-ed in Jan. 4/14, both declined.

- Ixnay the Home Depot $600 balance (though due to statement cut date, this is probably post-AOR activity).

All feedback welcome.

Shout outs:

To Glitch99 & doerrb for very patient Q&A last year.
To win333 for inspiring new trains of thought.
To in-thread helpers: peteypablo, win333, downhillskier, dougneb, hair, djspray, ahself, cyberkost, Rorer714.

Thanks for your AORs, used them for reference - EugeneV, stook2001, win333, ahself, Venturion, SecondCor521, robertw477, Brushwood, LordEcount, cashmonkey, jevon90

Creators of crucial threads - lhendricks92 (US Bank), stook2001 (Citi adverse action) SIS (The big Adverse Action Thread)

To those whose posts I study - SIS, DaveHanson, Glitch99, JayK

And last but absolutely not least, special thanks to markkundinger for shouting "Quick, consider applying for a personal Juniper card! It's not an omelette if you don't break a few eggs." - Landed me an instant $20K approval.

Thx for the green jevon, just found the BankAtlantic card in your AOR

Whoa!

Good catch. 0% on purchases WHEN YOU TRANSFER A BALANCE.

Have seen BT but no purch 0%, but never the other way 'round. Mucho thanx.

I don't see a point in applying for the US Bank business card with a nocap fee and only 6 months.

Reducing the number of lines in use can boost your score some. If you're doing longer term planning, consider paying off the Home Depot card (0% of $600 isn't very much), and maybe pay down a few other pay in full cards down so that they report a zero balance.

Questions:

(1) What kinds of reallocations might be recommended post-AOR?
(2) BT to checking - if I read the CC issuer FAQ right Chase is a no, Elan/US Bank is a no, Citi is a yes, Discover is a probable no. Anyone have different experience? Anyone know about Juniper (not filled out in the FAQ)?
(3) Anybody think I should try to get into Penfed as part of this AOR?

Put a whoa-nellie on this due to recent Citi adverse action reported against people with good credit profiles documented in this post. Seems to be driven by inquiries? Wait & see... grrr... maybe I should trim 1 or 2 of the Citi apps.

Reconsidering the value of the Discover More due to this post mentioning 4% (vs 2%) monthly min payment requirement.

Very interesting. I will find that thread. May not matter for my case because my WAMU offer said to take advantage of it before 3/27, but I want to know about it anyway. WAMU seems to like my mailbox.

Holding until at least 4/18 to allow the most recent EX inquiry to age past the 6-month mark.

win333, mucho thanx.

Found the NEA card. This is mucho cool. Means another EX pull but that's AOK. Will be interesting to see if BofA will give me the card, given that they declined my CLIs - but if they do, I love the way they hand out CLIs later.

Re $25K in BT - haven't completely figured out just how much I'll ultimately use. But believe me I'm thinking about it.

Quick questions:

- What is it you like so much about Chase? I have 1 card (they capped me at $13K) and my mortgage there but don't have a feel for them.

- What earned US Bank your #4 preferred? No 0% BT after app has me scratching my head about them.

- On that NEA card is there a CL advantage to BT at application? I know there is for US Bank, but don't have a feel for BofA.

Very cool info.

You have more in the bank than I do

Your $5K NEA is what I got on my BofA AMEX to start last year. My limits were lower then and it was part of my tiny-AOR. The big things from then though were the CLI to $24.9K on the Delta AMEX and the out-of-the-gate $30K on the AMEX SimplyCash card (I still don't understand how I got that). Those set the tone for the store apps where I said at application, "can you give me $25K?" (BrandSmart MC, Relax The Back). On the CitiFinancial I got up to $25K by request after making the purchases currently sitting on the card. Now I just ask for $25K all the time and see what I can get.

My scores were 780+ back then. Wow.

BofA has done a good job trying to one-up my other $25K cards. I suspect they've clamped the CLIs because they've done "enough" for now. At one point the BofA AAA was at $30K, but I moved some of it to the BofA AMEX.

I saw the AORs from Venturion, 2ndcore and Smoot2001. Haven't read them in as much detail as yours but definitely picked up some things from them and from your exchanges with them.

As I look at this thing the one thing I have to be careful with is timing the EQ freeze. If I do it before all the "EQ apps" get their inquiries done I'll be in a world of hassle.

Thinking I'll hold the AOR until Monday AM, then do the EX and EQ apps, wait 24 hours, freeze EQ, then do all the TU apps. Probably a good idea to freeze EX and TU after they have done their jobs too, in case anyone starts "roving" (BofA did that to me last year and man was I pissed).

I'm kind of iffy on the WAMU card. From what I can gather, taking up targeted offers with a BT results in a higher CL, but applying to them blind results in a smaller credit line. This is anecdotal and I'd love to hear contradictions, but it's all I have so far. Mix in some issues with requesting CLIs and it seems like a poor choice.

There is, however, a "find my offer" thing on the site for existing customers. When I feed it my login info it offers 0% purch/BT for 6 months, 3% uncapped, and 9.99%-19.99% credit-dependent afterwards. I don't know how well it dishes out CL, seems a little iffy.

downhillskier said: swishyx said: I'm kind of iffy on the WAMU card. From what I can gather, taking up targeted offers with a BT results in a higher CL, but applying to them blind results in a smaller credit line. This is anecdotal and I'd love to hear contradictions, but it's all I have so far. Mix in some issues with requesting CLIs and it seems like a poor choice.

I just did a mini-AOR (7 cards) yesterday with this card included. I got an instant $10,000 CL. As a comparison, I got $15,000 for Citi Associated and $15,000 for M&T Business. The other four were deferrals.
Cool (and congrats). Questions:

- Was this a WAMU targeted offer or did you apply blind?
- Were you a previous WAMU customer?
- Did you do a BT and if so how much?

Thanx!

swishyx said:
Cool (and congrats). Questions:

- Was this a WAMU targeted offer or did you apply blind?
- Were you a previous WAMU customer?
- Did you do a BT and if so how much?

Thanx!
I've never been a WAMU customer and I didn't have a targeted offer (except several of the same one you received - 0% on purchases if I do a BT at regular rate - went in the shredder!). I got the link from SecondCor521's AOR. He applied for a bunch of cards with this one after 35 applications and got $15,000 approved instantly. Turns out they pull TU for me, so that was even better.

Edit: No, I didn't do a BT with the application. I will probably do just under $5000 to be safe with my utilization.

Down to 1 inquiry on EQ. Yay.

Grrr, can't put a security freeze on TU online. Have to mail them paper.

Cool!!! Thanks!

swishyx said: win333 - was just reading up on Equifax's lock product, and it has the following:

If I use Equifax Credit Report Control to lock my credit report, can any information, including new accounts, be posted to my Equifax credit report?

New accounts may still be reported to Equifax and posted to your credit file if a creditor opens an account utilizing a credit report from one of the other credit reporting agencies whose file you have not locked, if you grant access to a creditor by unlocking your Equifax credit report, or if an account is opened by a creditor with whom you already have a current account or relationship.
This sounds to me like if I have a new creditor and I have all 3 reports locked up, the account with the new creditor won't be successfully posted on EQ. You read this the same way?

Na, they still report!

It will only stop new hard INQs from being put on your report. I've been freezing and unfreeze for a few months now.

Does anybody know how Citi will respond if they try to pull EQ for an app but can't because it's frozen?

win333 said: swishyx said: Does anybody know how Citi will respond if they try to pull EQ for an app but can't because it's frozen?
I just did that (yuk) but not on purpose, I'm waiting for the results now. I did 4 apps with EQ frozen and 2 apps with EQ unfrozen (I remembered it was frozen 1/2 way thru the AOR). I already have both cards in hand for the 2 unfrozen apps and no letters or nothing for the 4 apps yet.
Sounds like the apps may have been cancelled. Have you called for status?

Can't blame you for playing it safe. I would too. How long has it been since the "frozen apps?"

swishyx said: dougneb said: Yeah, my wife will be buying something from Staples today with the card. Dance it for 11.5 months and ask for a CLI, do a BT.
Ayup. Exactly my thinking.
Citi Business Premier Pass, 15k TY after 1st purchase, 0% BT 12mo, NBTF, annual fee.
Make purchase, pay off, do a full BT. A month or two later apply for Citi Business, 15k TY after 1st purchase, 0% BT 12mo, NBTF. Make purchase, pay off. Move available credit from Citi Business to Citi PP card and BT again for full amount. After 11mo of PP BT, pay off and consolidate card into the Citi Business (avoid annual fee). Do a BT for the full amount on Citi Business for 12 more months.