April Churn – Cancelled?!

It saddens me greatly to think that I am going to skip a credit card churn this April. I was due to apply for 3-4 credit cards on April 8th (this would have been 91 days since my last churn!). There are a few reasons for this:

• I am currently in the process of purchasing a house, which will add 1-2 hard inquiries to my credit report, dropping my score by 5-10 points
• I can’t apply for any cards during the process, which could also lower my score by 10-15 points, increase my interest rate and potentially give my lender a reason to cancel the loan agreement
• There are currently no deals that are really screaming out to me

A current breakdown of the cards I have or have applied for within the past 18 months (all approved!) include:

• United Mileage Plus Explorer
• Continental OnePass
• Chase Sapphire Preferred Visa
• Chase British Airways
• Chase Southwest Personal
• Chase Southwest Business
• Starwood Preferred Guest AMEX
• Barclays NFL
• Barclays U.S. Airways
• Citi Hilton Signature
• Citi Hilton Signature 2
• Citi AAdvantage Visa
• Citi AAdvantage AMEX

That list includes almost every BIG player in the game. Some current deals that I’m looking into include:

• Citi Hilton Reserve – This would give me 2 weekend nights at any Hilton in the world + Gold Status. As my Gold Status just expired, this is a decent sign-up. The only thing is that I don’t currently have any travel plans right now that would require a 2-night stay at a Category 10 Hilton…and I wouldn’t want to waste 2 nights at a Hampton Inn in Omaha, Nebraska – so I think this one can wait
• Hilton AMEX – This would give me access to Hilton AXON Awards, has no annual fee, and is an AMEX meaning that when I open it, it will sit on my credit report with an “open date” of when I opened my first AMEX. This is HUGE for helping improve one’s credit score. This would be the sole reason I get this card (plus the 50K point signup bonus, which would put me over 150K points in my HHonors account.
• Barclays Arrival Card. Spend $1,000 and get $400 towards travel. Hard to beat that!
• Barclays U.S. Airways Card. Wait, isn’t that a card I already have? Why, yes it is. Howeva – there are many reports that you can have multiple of these cards so long as you have a credit history of more than 6 months with Barclays. By June, I will have a 9-month relationship with them. If I apply for the Arrival Card, trying for a 2nd U.S. Airways card is almost completely risk-less. By applying for both cards in different browsers and submitting them about the same time, the credit inquiries should be combined, essentially giving no downside to a potential denial, but giving me an upside of a potential additional 30K American U.S. Airways miles (soon to be American ;)).

Other cards that I REALLY WISH I could apply for include the Chase Ink Bold and Chase Ink Plus cards. Those two alone would add 100K Ultimate Rewards points to my account, enough for a one-way first class ticket to just about anywhere in the world. Unfortunately business cards are only to be used on business spend, and the $5k in 90 days the cards require are a little too rich for my blood.

At any rate…by June, I will have a few more inquiries from the past fall off my credit report, increasing my credit score (hopefully close to the mid-700 range) and coninue my journey to travel in style at the right price: Free.