Ok... it's time to start thinking about my second AOR. It may be a little early, but if I need to close some cards to prepare, now would probably be the best time.

The first AOR was quite successful, yet quite eventful.

I ended up REALLY pissing Citibank off as they took huge adverse action against me AND my wife by closing all our credit accounts with them (after I had their money though - which I still have). I actually got a Citi credit specialist supervisor to re-open all the accounts, but then Citi decided to close them again a month later. I guess there is some computer algorithm in place that automatically flags accounts to be closed.

I really abused the hell out of Chase and I managed to avoid adverse action with them. My wife actually had some of her credit lines INCREASED a few months after the AOR.

But overall it was a successful AOR for me and my wife, as we took well over 300k in 0% BT money between the two of us. Looking forward to starting version 2.0 this September/October. But there are some things I need to start preparing for now which I am going to list here.

DjPiLL's 1st AOR - Archived

Here is the current situation of all our cards. I'll list all the relevant cards. We have other cards not listed (like store cards) but there really isn't any point cluttering this more than it needs to be. All balances will be paid down to 0 before AOR unless noted, which will also shoot my scores much higher.

DJPILL AOR - EXISTING CARDS

PrivacyMatters Scores: EX: 713 EQ: 743 TU: 752
Inquiries: EX: 12 EQ: 0 TU: 7 (trying to get these removed after they reappeared)

Bank		Card		Limit	Balance	Notes
Advanta Biz	Rewards?	10,000	7,910	won't be closing this in Sept since BT is good till Jan
Bank Atlantic	BizCard		42,000	35,451	Won't be closing this in Sept since BT is good till Dec
Chase Biz	Cash Rewards	71,500	50,750	still can't believe no adverse action here
Citi Biz	TYN Visa	35,000	31,300  This is a closed account - won't be able to reallocate
Discover Biz	Miles		10,000	7,900
BOA Biz		Plat Plus	10,000	0	I opened this but it had no good BT offer - duh
AMEX Biz	SimplyCashSM	3,000	0

BOA		NEA		25,500	20,855	
HSBC		Plat Rewards	10,750	8,875	
NatCity		Lifestyle	15,000	10,875	
RBS		Platinum	9.200	0
AMEX		Blue		7,000	0	
AMEX		IN:NYC		2,000	0
BOA		Plat Plus	500	0	
BOA		BankAmericard	500	0
Juniper		NatParks	500	0
WAMU		Platinum	30,000	0	This had a 0% purchase offer that I didn't use
Pentagon	CashRewards	24,000	0	My daily use card
Kroger		Rewards		8,000	0	
Discover	Miles		1,000	0	
Wachovia	Rewards		10,000	0
GE Money	Canine		13,500	0

WIFE AOR - EXISTING CARDS

CreditSecure Scores: EX: 768 EQ: 780 TU: 789 (wow these are high)
Inquiries: EX: 12 EQ: 0 TU: 6 (trying to get these removed after they reappeared)

Bank		Card		Limit	Balance	Notes

Advanta Biz	Rewards		12,500	10,100	won't be closing this in Oct since BT is good till Feb
Bank Atlantic	BizCard		32,000	28,250	won't be closing this in Oct since BT is good till Jan
Citi Biz	TYN		33,000	29,500	This is a closed account - won't be able to reallocate
Discover Biz	Miles		11,600	8,700	
Chase Biz	Rewards		33,000	14,500
 
BOA		NEA		20,000	16,500
RBS		Platinum	9,200	0
NatCity		Lifestyle	16,000	0	Epic Fail: Was forced to pay this BT down due to bo-bo
AMEX		Blue		9,900	0
AMEX		IN:NYC		3,000	0
Juniper		NatParks	500	0
Discover	Miles		1,000	0
TeachersFCU	CashBack	10,000	0
Chase		PefectCard	7,500	0	daily use card - will not be touching
Wacovia	        Rewards		7,000	0

Now I guess on to the questions. Should I be closing any of these 0 balance accounts now, in order to be able to re-apply for them in a few months when my BTs are up? I think the Juniper Nat Parks cards would be good to close now, since they only have $500 limits and the 0% offers for them are still available. The NatCity card that I screwed up on my wife's side may also be a good candidate.

I will have to put together a list of cards I will apply for. I am definitely going to target Citi Cards again this time around (why the hell not?) But I don't know if they will approve me. We'll see. Maybe I am now blacklisted. Ha ha ha. Maybe i'll start easy. Get the professional card and a biz card.

I will obviously look to re-up my offers with Chase and Bank Of America as I have good existing lines with them.

This time around I will definitely target AMEX. I guess i'll do CLIs with them before then try to reallocate to a good BT offer card. I didn't push AMEX last AOR because I had plenty of other cards with good BT offers. But this time around I will push AMEX hard. I really don't care if they FR me. I have the financials to back up my assets.

I will not be paying down my Advanta or Bank Atlantic cards unless somebody here suggests otherwise. Those cards have 15 and 16mo offers and I can get a few more months out of them. Plus they are both Biz cards so they will be off my credit report anyways.

Should I close the 10mo BT RBS cards after I pay those down? In hopes of reapplying after 12mos?

I will also need to find some good banks with good interest options. Rates are much lower now than back in 2007. I guess i'll try to target some of the 6% reward checking accounts. If the rates really stink, I may hold off the AOR.

Finally... I am going to consider doing this AOR with my Experian frozen to avoid additional EX inquiries. Good move or not? I wonder if that would help/hurt my chances at all? I know there is a thread or two in regards to this.

As for paying off the business cards with longer BT periods, I think you should be ok. The only concern I have is if when you apply for new business cards they will check your D&B report and see those cards with huge balances and may deny you. Shouldn't have any effect on personal cards though. Personally, I went ahead and paid everything off just in case, but I only had a small BT with Advanta that was still open to be milked. I'll be posting my AOR 2.0 thread on FWF also as soon as I collect a little more data. I'll be intersted to compare our card lists.

As for closing accoutns, I'm not planning on doing that at all. There are still enough cards out there to get 0% offers so that I don't need to close accounts. However, soon I will have to close some to keep the AOR game going as I approach the max number of cards per issuer. For example, Citi seems to have 4 personal card limit. I have only 2 right now, but after AOR 2.0, I'll have to close 1 or two in order to be able to get a new 0% offer (assuming they are still around at that time ).

If you do close accounts, make sure to at least consolidate the CL's into still open accounts to keep as much credit as possible. Pretty obvious, but very important.

Why not adopt a rolling strategy and BT your expiring BOA NEA balance and similar to the new cards? You may not find many new cards with 0% BT to apply for.You have most of the cards with good offers that I have seen around lately. Except maybe the US Bank no BT for balances xferred w/ this app. IF it won't be 20 apps, but more like 5, no real advantage to an AOR that I know of.

If you rolled my way, you could also use NEA card BT checks to create new balances to xfer as needed (assuming you do it before capped $30 fee and 0% rate expire). Maybe pay off HSBC beforehand to improve your profile as that balance is too small to be useful in transferring...

Before anything else, I'd consolidate out of existence or cancel all your dinky lines, such as NatParks and your $500 BOA lines. Those don't look good on your profile.

The reason why I don't want to pay down the Business apps with longer lines is because some of that money I actually put towards an extension to my house. So while I have say 300k in AOR debt right now, I have about 280k in AOR funds. It's my way of funding my home improvements on 0%.

Now if I have to pay it down completely, I could use some other liquid assets I have, but i'd rather not. Or maybe out of the four cards with longer BT periods (two Advanta and two Barclays), I can pay down three of them and keep one of the Barclays which will put me on the positive in funds. Or I could just pay down the two larger Barclays lines and keep the two smaller Advanta cards.

But if I run a huge risk of getting new business apps declined, maybe ill pay them all down. One thing to remember though, with my AOR I had a 22k balance on a Citi 0% for life card BEFORE I launched the AOR. I still got HUGE lines regardless of this one balance.

Plus today my wife got a letter from Chase. They are pleased with her credit history and are raising the credit line on her business rewards credit card. Now she can "hire more employees" as they like to say. LOL So it looks like even with the balances, our credit profile is good.

Not sure what to do.

any update? did you pull trigger? I froze EX today as I am planning my own AOR very soon. did you decide to freeze ex also?

Also it seems that MikeR had some good results from cancelling his Advanta card and re-applying for them. I may do this, even though my Advanta cards aren't up until January.

jackcrawfish said:DjPiLL said:jackcrawfish said:any update? did you pull trigger? I froze EX today as I am planning my own AOR very soon. did you decide to freeze ex also?


I still have a month or two left on my current AOR. Thanks to TU all my TU inquiries returned. So I am trying to get them off again. Working with CreditSecure but I may have to subscribe to another service to get this done faster and by October.

But once I can get these INQs off version 2.0 sould be launching. are you also using the free CreditKarma service here? Just a thought...

I just signed up with CK today for both me and my wife. Will start pulling. So far no b* on my wife's account. Must have done about 20 soft pulls so far. My trial on my CS should be up in a few days so I can start pulling my account shortly.

I will probably sign myself up for a third service for myself since my AOR will start a month before my wife's. What would you guys recommend besides CK and CS?

DjPiLL said:jackcrawfish said:DjPiLL said:jackcrawfish said:any update? did you pull trigger? I froze EX today as I am planning my own AOR very soon. did you decide to freeze ex also?I still have a month or two left on my current AOR. Thanks to TU all my TU inquiries returned. So I am trying to get them off again. Working with CreditSecure but I may have to subscribe to another service to get this done faster and by October.

But once I can get these INQs off version 2.0 sould be launching. are you also using the free CreditKarma service here? Just a thought...I just signed up with CK today for both me and my wife. Will start pulling. So far no b* on my wife's account. Must have done about 20 soft pulls so far. My trial on my CS should be up in a few days so I can start pulling my account shortly.FYI...

Cancel then re-enroll in CreditSecure immediately and you can pull daily (right away rather than waiting the full 30 trial period).

Can somebody explain CreditKarma? I signed up yesterday and got my scores. So I tried to log in and it was a little tricky. I had trouble finding the spot where I can just log in. It asks to re-register?

What do I have to do to assure that I pull properly? Refresh the score?

Ok thanks. Looks like that worked.

I think I got one of the TU inquiries off my wife's report. I only see six on there now (even though the summary page still shows 7). That will probably update tomorrow.

Had to pull about 20-25 times to see this change.