Best Credit Card with Rewards Offer

Guest: runaway76
Post subject: Best Credit Card with Rewards Offer
Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 4:07 am

I got perfect credit as far as I know.
I just bought my house. (no intentions of refinancing at the moment at least until next year due to contract) and I'm $700k in debt @ 6.125% 30 year fixed. yes, my morgage payment is killing me = my salary.

I have my credit card: Citi Dividend, member since 1994. (i'm fairly happy with this one overall). Balance is paid in full every month.

I get zillions of credit card offers: These $100 gift cards are tempting. Frequent flyer miles w/ no annual fees and get like 15k miles, blah blah.

I have perfect spending discipline.

My questions:
1) How many credit card offers can I get accepted to without "wrecking" my credit?
My plan: I open account, buy my first purchase ($1.25), pay it, wait, get reward, close account.

2) So I got my $100 home depot reward. How soon should i close my account? (if I close it a couple days afterwards, is that TOO soon?)

3) After I close my account, can I re-open the same card and get another reward?

4) What about a different credit card (both Citibank cards I'm looking at, but they go into the thankyou network). Can I get another $100 home depot card? I figure Citibank has like 5 or 6 cards that I'd be interested in just to get the rewards. I'm also looking at frequent flyer miles too figure one for every airline if there is no annual fees.

5) is there a black list for desperate people like me?

6) I saw a forum that said after 5 credit card offers, he was denied. True? Time limits? Wait time?

7) what is the recovery time?

Would it be worth it?

What about balance transfer game? There are offers with 0%APR, 0%Balance transfers, can I use it to pay off the morgage? (thus saving me 6.125%), or should I just keep the cash in a interesting bearing account so in case I have to pay off the credit card? (~4% at Paypal)

With my morgage payments, I currently have negitive cash flow, so I'm getting desperate to save what I can.

advice?

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Guest: runaway76
Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 4:21 am

Here are some references that I used for my research:
in this colum. If there is other discussions, let me know (just post the link). I did quite a few searches, and went though about >1/2 current postings. About 3 hours yack.

The Art of Stoozing to Make Money from Credit Cards
http://webgroups.biz/creditcardperks/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=8087&highlight=art


Credit Card Addiction
http://webgroups.biz/creditcardperks/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=8115&highlight=addiction

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Guest: Board Monitor
Board Monitor/ Administrator
Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 7:51 am

3 hours of research!?! Wow...are you an addict too?
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Guest: mouse
SENIOR MEMBER (Member for 2 yrs.+)
Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 8:22 am

I wouldn't apply and close any card two days later just for the reward

What a WASTE of an inquiry

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Guest: Polonius
SENIOR MEMBER (Member for 2 yrs.+)
Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 11:29 am

Waste of an inquiry? Pay me a hundred bucks per inquiry and I'll have a dozen cards opened today. It's free money. Any hit on your credit score is temporary.

Question is why you would want to close those cards at all after getting the premiums. With that large mortgage, you can use the intro period of low balance transfer rates to really pay it down. But you do have to be careful that you'll be able to pay off the cards when the intro rate expires. That's a heckuva lot easier when you're using the funds to pay down a HELOC than a traditioanl mortgage. You can just pull the funds out of the HELOC when it comes time to repay--you're not going to be able to do that with a mortgage. But by paying off the mortgage faster than expected, you could probably get a HELOC for the extra amount you've paid back (giving you more equity) and use that.

The original poster is asking some very interesting questions. There are lots of angles and lots of things to say about it. Some of those questions are answered in my App-O-Rama post from a few weeks back:

AOR Post

Note how old cards can have their credit limits reallocated to new cards, how some banks like Citi have limits on the number of applications they'll consider in a given period and the number of cards they'll allow, and so forth.

That should get you started. Lots to talk about here. Might be best to separate all the questions into separate posts to keep discussion clearer.

For one thing, negative cash flow is NOT a good thing.
_________________
Polonius
"Neither a borrower, nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend"

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