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Saturday, June 16, 2012

Time to App-O-Rama

It’s time to app-o-rama for my wife. For those of you who are not familiar with App-O-Rama, take a look at the link and it’s all about “apply a few credit cards within the same day”. Simple and Easy to understand, huh?

First, why do we want to do that? I list major reasons below.
1.      Better tracking: say you apply for 4 cards with first year annually fee waived, $69 on-going, fine, if you plan to cancel one or all of the cards, you know that those cards have almost same time of 1st year free, then you don't lose tracking of unwillingly paying 2nd year fee.

2.      Chance of getting approval is HIGH: because creditor take hard inquires(every time you apply for a credit card, aka Pull) seriously, if you have >5 pulls over the last 6 months, chances are they will deny you. Now, since you apply the same day, some creditors’ system is a bit behind, even though they pull the same bureau (Experian for example), they don’t see other creditors’ pulls. Hence, your chance of getting instant on-line approval is much higher.

However, since you apply for some cards together and most of cards have spending limit, say $3000 within 3 months, the drawback is that you have to complete a large spending within a period of time. Say, you apply 4 cards, each with $2000 within 3 months, now within 3 months, you need to spend instead of $2000 but $8000. Wow. However, there are 40 ways to meet the requirement by Million Miles Secret.

Now let us take a look at my strategy for this round for my wife’s app-o-rama.

Card Points 1st year Fee Note
SPG 25000 hot offer
AMEX Hhonor 40000 Irene will keep this card for years as it's no fee
BoA Hawiian 70000 $79 convert to Hilton points
BoH Hawiian  70000 $79 convert to Hilton points
205000

 

1.      Irene already had 5 Chase cards, I don’t want her to be blacklisted by Chase. Most of good offers are from Chase, you will be definitely screwed up if you screw Chase up. So, I will exclude Chase.

2.      Irene also has 4 Citi personal cards and it’s not beyond 65+ days for her to apply AAdvanage business card, so I will exclude Citi as well. FYI, you can apply Citi with the schema of 1P+1B (one person + one business), but two notes: 1) you can use two browser trick to get 2P 2) business card you need to wait for 65 days.

3.      Irene applied two AMEX cards
1SPG  (this is my link that I will get 5000 points if you use, I will be very grateful if you did)

2)      American Express Hilton HHonors – 40,000 bonus points 
40,000 bonus points after spending $750 within 3 months on the American Express Hilton HHonors card.  You can email Million Mile Secret at daraius@millionmilesecrets.com for an application link (he will earn 10,000 Hilton points if you’re approved)

3)      Two cards to earn Hawaiian Airlines
Bank of America Hawaiian Airlines credit card - 35,000 Hawaiian Airline miles (or 70,000 Hilton points)
20,000 bonus Hawaiian Airlines miles after 1st purchase with Bank of America Hawaiian Airline card. 15,000 bonus Hawaiian Airline miles after spending $1,000 within 4 months
Hawaiian Airline points transfer to Hilton in 1:2 ratio, so 35,000 Hawaiian Airline miles becomes 70,000 Hilton Honors points
$79 fee NOT waived for first year; 3% foreign transaction fee
Warning: Bank of America may issue you a lower platinum card, if you don’t qualify for the Signature card, which offers only 10,000 miles!

Bank of Hawaii Hawaiian Airlines credit card - 35,000 Hawaiian Airline miles (or 70,000 Hilton points) 20,000 bonus Hawaiian Airlines miles after 1st purchase with Bank of Hawaii Hawaiian Airline card.
15,000 bonus Hawaiian Airline miles after spending $1,000 within 4 months
Hawaiian Airline points transfer to Hilton in 1:2 ratio, so 35,000 Hawaiian Airline miles becomes 70,000 Hilton Honors points
$79 fee NOT waived for first year; 3% foreign transaction fee
Warning: You may be issued a lower platinum card, if you don’t qualify for the Signature card, which offers only 10,000 miles!

Final Words

In terms of App-o-rama, my advice are
1. every 4~6 months, or 2~3 times a year, whatever you feel comfortable, even you just apply for two cards, it's fine. make sure your score is >700 and credit utilization <30%.
2. apply with diversity(more creditors, the better, for example, AMEX/CHASE/Citi/BoA combo)
3. You need to closely monitor your credit, understand hard pull, soft pull, which creditor pulls which bureau.

Feel free to contact me for any questions.

Also, since most of WA credit cards pull my Experian credit. I’ve signed Experian monthly monitoring and unlimited credit report services for ~$8/month, you can get $1 for 7 days trial and regular price is $14.99, but I negotiated to 50% off over the phone.(you can cancel anytime)
If you don't want to pay for it, Credit Sesame has FREE Experian score(it's a proxy score, but pretty close). You can sign up to understand your score, however, it doesn't give you an idea of how many pulls within 6 months which is a MAJOR factor of creditor approve/deny your application.

1 comment:

  1. How did you get Experian to lower your monthly payment to half? You are such a good negociator. :)

    ReplyDelete