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At any given point in time, there are plenty of lucrative welcome bonuses on credit cards. 100,000 points, 200,000 points, sometimes even more. And who doesn't want that? Now, maybe you've already had some of those bonuses, but here's something that happens to almost everyone. Eventually you get a denial. It's happened to me, and just this past week I got an email from someone with an 820 credit score who got denied for a card he was sure he would qualify for. For some, it's getting denied on that card you really want. For others, it's a string of denials across different issuers. And it's rarely because something went wrong with your credit score. What's actually happening is that there is a system behind every credit card approval, one that every bank uses, even if they each tune it a little differently. Today, I'm going to walk you through how that system works, what banks actually look at when you apply, and how to improve your odds of getting approved for the credit cards you actually want to let's start looking at my own credit report. And if you pulled my FICO score, it swings anywhere from 50 to 80, even 100 points in various different months. Sometimes it's as high as 850 and sometimes it's in the mid-700s. So the question is why? Well, sometimes my cards report with really high balances and look like they're being 80, 90% utilized, which is true. But it's not that I'm carrying any balances. I'm always paying in full. I just pay after the statement closes, not before. Now, there is a way to avoid this. You can pay your statement before the statement cuts. So if your statement closes on the 15th of June, you could pay it off on the 14th. So it closes at a $0 balance. Now, that's great for reducing your utilization, but we will get to why you might not actually want to do that. But the number that reports the bureaus is whatever shows on your statement close date. Now keep in mind that some cards don't report a credit limit at all, so utilization isn't something they can actually calculate. That's usually the case with charge cards, but they do report your balances so spending still shows up on the report, even if it doesn't actually report your credit limit. If you want to go deeper on credit scores, that is not what this episode is. Go listen to episode 221. I went really deep on how scores and credit reports work and everything you might want to need. So if you want to know why I do that instead of paying it off before the statement cuts, because high utilization does often impact your credit score, it's really simple. I appreciate having an extra 20 plus days to pay off my credit cards. That float is valuable. That money sits in a high yield savings account. And then also the overhead of doing it is so frustrating because you can't set up your credit card to auto pay before the statement cuts. And so if you want to do that, you have to manually log in, manually schedule those payments. And that's just a lot of work. But honestly, the real reason is it doesn't really matter if you're not actively trying to open a card or take out a loan, your credit score doesn't have a lot of impact other than a vanity metric you can check on. And when you are applying, at least for credit cards, the score is not as important as you think. Oftentimes issuers have kind of a floor where they say above this amount, it kind of passes a gate. It might be 720, it might be 750, but usually scores much higher than that are kind of all the same. And, and what people are actually looking at is what's on the report and what's happening. And so yes, it's important to have a score in the kind of, let's call it above 720 range and below that it will have an impact on opening cards. But how far above that and what impact that'll have is actually less important than what's on the credit report itself, because the scoring model is not necessarily tuned towards exactly what every issuer is looking for for a new credit card. So I think most people are really obsessed with the single metric that's easy to track your credit score. But what's on that report is way more important when it comes to getting a credit card approved. But there is actually one more reason that I don't pay off my cards before the statement cuts. It's because I actually want a higher utilization. Now, yes, that impacts my credit score in that month, but I actually think that it helps in the long run, even though I have no data to support this. And it's because of the way credit reports work. One of the factors on almost every trade line or credit line in your credit report is the high balance. And so when credit issuers are making decisions in the underwriting process, I believe they're looking at all the data on your credit report. And one of those pieces of data is the highest balance you've ever carried. And banks are actively looking for customers who aren't going to take on a lot of debt with a credit card and, and not pay it off. So I think the fact that I can show that I've had really high balances on credit cards going up to the max and paid it off without any delinquencies, I think makes me look like an attractive customer to banks who are looking for customers who aren't going to write off their balance and end up in bankruptcy and cost the bank a lot of money. I can't prove that that's one of the factors that helps me get approved for cards, but my gut says it's part of the story. And it's also a similar signal in the opposite direction that caused a listener to, to get denied by Citi for their situation. And we'll get to that in a minute. Now, I will say that if you are applying for a mortgage or an auto loan or some other type of loan, ignore what I just said, because the credit score is a very, very important metric in those lending decisions. And so if that is on the horizon, making sure that you're managing all of your existing loans in a way that really optimizes for a high score can have a really big impact on, on approvals or even the rates you get on those loans. And so anytime I've got a lending decision for a auto loan, mortgage, or anything like that in the near future, I'm not trying to optimize for getting the biggest bonus. I'm trying to optimize for keeping my credit score high so that I can get the best rate and get my loan approved. And so I'm paying before the statement close. I'm trying to score max. I'm trying to do all the standard advice because the score matters. Actually, one more thing. If I go look at all of the cards I have right now, I have about 28 issued currently in my name, but if I look at my credit report, only 11 of them show up there. And that's because the majority of them are business cards. And for the most part, business cards, at least all of mine, and most major issuers, do not show up on your credit report. And so that matters a lot, because if you close a business card with a really high balance or a low balance, you know, you might think that has some impact. But. But if that card's not getting reported to your credit in the first place, it doesn't really affect your credit report or your credit score. Now, some credit cards from businesses do report, but all the main ones, Chase, Amex, at least the charge cards at Capital One which I've had, and probably a few others, at least. Citi. None of those for me have shown up on my report. And when it comes to business cards, I think one thing to keep in mind is you do need a business, right? A lot of these issuers are not going to just let you open up a card unless you have a business. But what counts as a business does not necessarily mean you need to have a business with 50 employees and millions of dollars in revenue. In fact, starting a business that has no revenue yet is still a business. And that happens to almost every new business. Banks are interested in having new business customers. And so I think when you're thinking about whether you're eligible for a business card, I would encourage you to think about whether there is anything you're doing that meets the criteria of a business. Because I meet people all the time that think they're not eligible for business cards, but they actually are, because maybe they do some consulting, maybe they have a business where they sell things on Etsy, maybe they have a blog, and maybe they're building out a podcast. There's all kinds of stuff people do that are businesses that we're kind of trained to not think of as businesses because, you know, we don't have employees and we still have a separate job. And so if you have business income, which could take many different forms, or, or if you even have business activity that doesn't yet generate income, but maybe will in the future, as long as it's something that, you know, you could write down and describe as a business to someone that is doable, you could do it under your own Social Security number as a sole proprietor. Or in many cases, it's very easy to go to the IRS and get an EIN for a sole proprietor business. And you could still apply as a sole proprietor, but with an EIN instead of your Social Security number. Now, at the end of the day, we. When you do a business credit card under your EIN or Social Security number, it's tied back to you and it's your credit. So the business isn't the only one on the hook. It's still going to be you on the hook and you're gonna be the one responsible for that card, but it would be linked to that business. This episode is brought to you by Quints. I just want clothes that feel easy and comfortable, but still look pulled together. Stuff that makes getting dressed simple instead of another decision. Quince is where I keep landing for that. Everything feels elevated, the fits are clean, and it just works without me overthinking. Any of it. And what makes this possible is the model Quince works directly with top factories that meet rigorous standards for craftsmanship and ethical production and cuts out the middlemen. That's how you get 100% European linen shorts and shirts from $34 or Pima cotton tees that are genuinely soft. Everything is 50 to 80% less than you'd find at similar brands. Refresh your everyday with luxury you'll actually use. Head to Quint.comAllTheHacks for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com AllTheHacks for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.com AllTheHacks this episode is brought to you by Mercury Banking Designed to work the way modern software does I spend a probably unreasonable amount of time optimizing things. I've got credit card setups that squeeze points out of every category, I've rebuilt my travel booking process more times than I can count, and I test new tools constantly. But for years my business banking was just fine. That's weird, right? Every dollar for the business runs through our bank, payroll, operating costs, everything. And somehow I just accepted Good enough. Mercury fixed that. I've used it for years and it's the first banking product that actually feels like modern software. Doing things I didn't know I wanted until I had them. Every new project I start now gets its own bank account. 30 seconds to open Automations move money to where it's supposed to be. ACH and USD wires are free and take seconds. No phone calls, no forms and no waiting on hold. The assumption was always that good banking meant trade offs. Accept the friction to get the features. Mercury doesn't have that trade off and it's free to get started. No minimum balance. If you're running a business, you have to check it out. Visit mercury.com to learn more and apply online in minutes. That's mercury.com Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC insured bank. Banking services provided through Choice Financial Group and Column N A Members FDIC so I talked a lot about how what's on the report might matter more than the score and that anything above 720 might just be kind of a threshold check. So let's talk about what factors on your credit report actually matter and how you might think about them. So one is your credit limit at that issuer relative to your stated income. Now anytime you fill out an application for a new credit card, there's going to be a field where it asks for your income. And many issuers have made it clear that even though it's often written as what is your annual income, if you do some research, you'll see that household income is a fair answer for that. And so I always put the combined household income on my report, so that income is high. There's not any checking on this number. But I have heard plenty of situations where at some point an issuer might ask for some access to your tax returns or some proof of income. And so I would encourage people to put a truthful answer. But if your spouse has an income that is know meaningful, adding that to your income is something that most issuers have no issue with. And so that is something that could increase that number. And so each bank has its own tolerance. So I can't give you a number like you need to have 50% or 70% or something like that. But there are many issuers who are looking at your credit limit relative to your stated income. And this is usually your credit limit at the issuer, which means they have access to all this data. So that might include business cards that don't show up on your credit report. And so for many issuers, there's just a cap. For me, I think I've hit that cap at Chase. If I apply for a new car to Chase, I'm almost never going to get approved out the gate because I have too much credit at that issuer. And so they're not interested in extending any more credit. Now, that's probably relative to my income. So if my income went up, then maybe they would be willing to give me more credit. But that's one factor that you have to keep in mind. Another one might be your total credit across all issuers relative to your income. Now, in this case, it really would only affect the cards on your credit report because like I mentioned, they don't have access to your entire credit line on cards that they can't see. So I think if I looked at the total credit limit I have across all my cards, it's more than double whatever the total limit is just on my personal cards. So this is something that banks are worried about because if you had 3, 4, $500,000 of credit across all of the cards you had open to you, and all of a sudden there was some issue, how much could you run up in balances that you wouldn't be able to pay off relative to how much you're making? And if you don't have enough income to support that they can actually get a little worried. And the denial language they often use is something like high amount of unused credit relative to your available credit lines or available income. So they're looking at, do you have a lot of credit that you're not using right now? In fact, we got a question from someone that said, I was turned down by Citi for an American Airlines card with a credit score of 800 because my credit utilization was too low. This person said they thought there was about 3%. And they said, what would you say? I have a bunch of cards with really high credit lines that I don't use. How do I handle this situation? And this is exactly what I was talking about. This person has a lot of unused credit. And it sounds like Citi in this case, which is a stricter issuer when it comes to kind of on the spectrum of issuers, was kind of worried that there's just all this credit available to this person. They're not using it at all. What happens if something were to happen? Now I'll get to why some of these denial reasons might not necessarily be things that you read at face value. Right. Some people have had denial reasons that just aren't true. They're like, you've had too many new accounts and they haven't had any new accounts. And so this is just something that people are looking at. And this is a good example of what happens. And so I'll get back to what this person should do because their instinct might be, oh, oh, I should lower my credit lines. But it might make more sense to show that you can use some of the credit, maybe use some of it one month, Let a balance report instead of having it look like a bunch of empty credit lines. Another factor is your payment history across all your accounts. Of course, people are looking to see if your late payments, charge offs, bankruptcies, anything like that. That seems to make sense. If you have those things and they're not actually true, or even some cases if they are, you can call up to your issuer that reported them and the credit bureau. You can sometimes get those things removed. Another one is recent inquiries on your credit. How many times have banks asked you for credit? These are hard polls that are on your credit report what they're looking for. They stay on your report for two years and they usually stop affecting your score for about a year. But keep in mind, if a credit card issuer is not looking at your credit score, they're looking at your report. Yes, they might not affect your score after A year, but they're still there. And some banks are really sensitive to these things, Capital One especially. And why? Well, they're looking and saying, gosh, this person is trying to get a lot of credit. If you were trying to make a decision of whether you wanted to lend money to a friend of yours and one of your friends said, hey, I just tried to get seven loans and couldn't get any, can I borrow some money? And the other person didn't say that. You know, you'd probably be a little bit biased against the person that has been asking around for loans a lot versus the person who hasn't. And so that's why recent inquiries can have a big impact on getting approved. But the good news is those recent inquiries kind of are fade away over time. So when it's 6, 12, 24 months away, they have way less impact than someone whose inquiries are in the last 30 to 90 days. And so a quick listener question here came from Adam. I recently completed a vehicle purchase at the end of my lease two weeks ago. And in the process of getting financing, I had multiple auto finance credit inquiries, which happens when I recently got our loan for our last car. I think I had six or seven inquiries. I didn't apply through just six or seven companies. I applied through one platform and they farmed out the loan. So I applied through the Tesla app and they farmed it out to six or seven different lenders. And so I understand that when calculating the score, those things all get aggregated into one, but that doesn't mean that they're not all on my report. And so Adam said that he was hoping to get the Venture X card from Capital One because he had a bunch of bills coming up, they would easily cover his minimum spend and he got denied due to too many recent inquiries. So this is a great example of something that happens for certain issuers who are really inquiry sensitive, which Capital One is. And he said, how long should I wait to reapply? The short answer is it's a little bit of a black box. Capital One is one of the most sensitive to these areas and it's probably going to be, if I had to guess, try again in three to six months. And it's not the perfect answer. They don't publish these things specifically. So the good news is they do have a preapproval tool on their website and many banks do. So you're able to find out if you're going to get approved before you go through the process of actually getting another hard inquiry on your account. So that's definitely something worth doing. So my advice again, wait probably two to three months and try again. Now, separate from inquiries, another factor is how many recently opened accounts you have. And so this is accounts you got approved for, not just applications. So the most famous example of a rule in this case is Chase. They have this unpublished but well known 524 rule where if you've opened five new accounts in the last 24 months, then you're denied for a new Chase card. That's been the rule. And so it's based on the number of accounts you've opened. Whether you've applied for a hundred or five is kind of less important for this rule. You know, a hundred probably won't look good for anyone. But the 524 rule is about how many accounts you've opened. Now, keep in mind, business cards don't apply to this. And so if you've opened five business cards in the last six months, they won't show up on your credit report if they're at most issuers. And so they wouldn't affect these rules, but the inquiries from those accounts would. And so I've noticed, you know, I'll have a handful of business cards show up on my inquiry list, but they won't actually show up on the credit report. So they don't affect issuers who care a lot about recently opened accounts. And then one more factor, which is kind of the X factor, is the internal model that the bank has. This is just something that every bank has, their own proprietary model that sits on top of all this. Sometimes they're pulling data from public sources, LexisNexis, they have internal signals and things can get flagged that you don't even know about. And so they won't always report on those things. And they don't even have to necessarily. But, but there's always an X factor here. And even if a bank gives you a specific reason, it's not certain that that specific reason is the only reason. But they are required to disclose some reason and we'll talk about that. Okay, so those are the factors. Let me apply them to the question I mentioned in the intro to this episode. And that was from Jordan and he said, I recently tried to apply for a new credit card, but I was denied. My credit score is 820. I have no late payments, collections or bankruptcies. My credit usage is only 1% and my total credit limit is $245,000. I pay my cards off in full every month. I've got 11 cards open and I'm at 324 with Chase. He wanted to know what's going on. And he didn't mention the issuer, but he said, I went to do a pre approval and I was only given options. And they were both secured credit cards. They weren't even kind of credit cards I was interested in. And a secured credit card, keep in mind, is something where you have to deposit money. So nobody was interested in lending him anything in this particular case. And he said, I see credit card and points people online all the time with tons of cards. And he's right, right. I have more than 11 cards. And he's wondering how is this happening? He feels stuck. How is he not getting approved? And so let's walk through what's happening. 820 credit score, fine, well above the threshold. That is not the issue. 324 with Chase, fine. That's probably not the issue for most issuers. Now if those three cards were all opened in the last couple of months, that could be the issue. I don't have that level of detail, but I'm guessing that's not the thing here. 1% utilization across $245,000 of credit line. So there's basically somewhere around $243,000 of credit available that's not being used. And depending on the issuer, that could be a really big signal. It could look like I've got all this credit just waiting to be used and I've never really used it before. Now we don't know that full story. Jordan didn't give me, you know, his full credit report. But if there's never been any balances drawn on those cards and they've never had high amounts of spend, you know, it's like, well, why if you have all these cards open, do you need more credit? You know, he pays in full each month. Great for his finances. But if he pays in full early or pays in full before the statement closes, which we didn't get a lot of clarity of, it might show like a lot of zero balances. And then he said his pre approval search was only showing him secured cards. Now we don't know which bank this was. So if Jordan were on the show right now, I would ask, what bank did you check this out? And just my gut says it's Capital One because they're the most sensitive to almost everything. And so that would be my question. I also know they have a lot of secured cards that they present online. So that's my sense. Is that what that might have been? Because they're Just unusually sensitive to this. He didn't mention how many inquiries he had. So, yes, he's only opened three accounts in the last 24 months, but I don't know how many inquiries have happened. Did he just have the same situation as Adam and he just got a car loan and. And even though there might be one new account, there might have been 12 inquiries for taking out that auto loan. So I don't know the answer to that question either. I'd also want to know what his income is, because if you have $245,000 of credit limit and you have a $200,000 income, well, that's a really big flag for a lot of issuers. Now, if his income was a million dollars, then that's really not going to be a flag. And then what does that distribution look like of the 250, 45,000? Is it all at one bank? Is it across lots of different banks? That could be a factor. How do those banks relate to the bank he applied for? That's another factor. This episode is brought to you by Whisper Flow. You know that moment when you've got 30 seconds, you're between meetings or waiting in line and there's a message you've been meaning to send, but it just take too long to type out, so you push it off again. That's where Whisper Flow has really changed things for me. I just Talk for about 20 seconds and it shows up, written out, cleaned up, and in whatever app I'm already in on my phone or computer. Two reasons this works. First, talking is faster than typing. 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Okay, so what would I actually do if I were in Jordan's situation? So before you apply for any credit card, what might you do before you click Submit to have the highest likelihood of getting approved? So the first thing I would do is look at my credit report just to kind of understand what's going on. Am I currently in a situation where I'm closing with really high balances or really low balances? What is the amount of credit I have right now showing on my credit report relative to how much income I'm going to be stating on my application? Those factors are really, really important. And then I would think about what bank am I applying to and if I'm thinking about opening a few cards, what order am I going to do that? So some are very, very sensitive to new accounts and to credit to income ratios and some are very lenient. So I would put Capital One, Citi, maybe even US Bank a little bit on the stricter side. And then I would put bank of America and Chase kind of in the middle and Amex a lot easier for established cardholders and people who have a proven track record to get cards with Amex. And so I would be thinking about that order. And this is actually relevant to a conversation I just had with a friend who reached out to me and she said, you know, I've got this business going, I have a lot of business expenses. I'd love some more points. What should I apply for? Right now I'm thinking about getting the Amex Business Platinum. And I said, oh, how many cards do you think you're going to open this year for the business? And she said, probably two. And I was like, okay, well let's look at the best offers right now. And so we literally pulled up together. We went to all thehacks.com cards where I have all the best offers documented and not just the best offers that are partner links of ours. I try to put the best offer out there. So whether it's a link that supports the show or not, whether it's a referral link from one of our members, I'm just trying to put the best offers there so that if you're looking for a card and you want to get the best deal, where can you go to find that? I want to make it easy. Now, using those links sometimes does support the show and I greatly appreciate it. So thank you in advance. So we went through that and we identified a couple cards that might make sense right now. And so one of them was the new Capital One Venture Business card, which at the time had 150,000 point welcome offer. And then the Amex Business Platinum card also did have a really compelling offer. And so we thought about, okay, well which one do you want to do first? And we just talked about this. Capital One is the most sensitive. And so instead of getting the card she had originally thought, she went for the Capital One Venture Business card first with kind of a much cleaner fresher credit report. And to no surprise, she was approved. And then later she's planning to look at the Amex card after when she might have a recent inquiry from that Capital One card which might not be as scrutinized as it would if she had done something in the opposite direction. Now, I did mention again, Amex Business Card wasn't going to show up on her report, but that doesn't mean that the inquiry wasn't and that the inquiry might matter now. Both those offers are still out there. So on the business card side, the Capital One Venture business card still has 150,000 capital 1 mile offer. Right now, the Amex Business Platinum still has a as high as 300,000 point offer. That's a little tricky with Amex because they no longer have very specific offers. They often have an as high as now. Fortunately, they will show you what offer you're going to get before you apply. But it is not always the highest number you will see. As of recording this in the middle of May, the offers that on the personal side are probably most interesting are if you haven't had the Chase Sapphire reserve card. On the personal side, it has a limited time 150,000 point offer for spending $20,000 in three months. And that's a best ever offer on that card. And so for the personal side, that's a really great option, as is the bank of America Atmos Summit card for Alaska's Atmos rewards program. And they have still, it's not a best ever, but it's kind of a consistent a hundred thousand point offer. And I've been a huge fan of Alaska or Atmos points. And so that's another interesting one. And so again, all those offers, all the hacks.com cards, you can browse them, but I'll just thought I'd flag a few interesting ones right now. Another factor that is important when applying for cards at some banks is establishing a non credit card relationship with that bank. And for many banks that is just opening up a checking account. Now if it's a business card, it might be a business checking account. If it's a personal card, it might be a personal checking account. And there are some banks where that matters a lot more than others. And so I've heard a lot of advice to do this for bank of America. And in fact, bank of America rewards you for doing this. And in some cards, their own cards, they reward you with their preferred rewards program, which is rebranding to bank of America Rewards, which we should have more details about I think by the time this episode comes out, because it's at the end of May, so more on that to come later. But then even for cards like their Atmos cards, they give you an extra 10% boost on the Atmos points that you earn if you have an active checking account. And I believe that some of the application rules for bank of America are even looser for customers of bank of America's banking products than not. And so this isn't true for every bank. And there are some banks where I think it's very unlikely to matter, like Amex, but banks kind of in the middle. Maybe it's Chase or US Bank. I don't know whether it will or won't help you, but I imagine that in many cases it wouldn't hurt. But in bank of America, I have heard that it's definitely helpful. So that's something to consider. And then one other strategy to consider is around credit bureaus. So if you look at your credit report, you'll notice sometimes that you have inquiries from different credit card applications, but they don't show up on every single report. So I'm going to pull up mine right now. And if I look at my hard inquiries, on TransUnion, I only have one. On Equifax I have three, and on Experian I have five. So it looks like only my car application showed up on TransUnion, whereas Capital One, bank of America, Citi and Chase all still show up on my Experian report. And then Equifax has some of them. Now, different issuers pull from different bureaus, some of them pull from one, some of them pull from two, some of them pull from all three. And if you have your credit report locked on all three bureaus, you'll usually get immediately denied. But sometimes if you have certain credit bureaus frozen, issuers might pull from other credit bureaus if they're originally targeting that one. So in my case, if I wanted to look like I had not very many inquiries recently, I would love for someone to pull my TransUnion report because that shows that I haven't had a single inquiry since December 2024, whereas Experian would look a lot busier. Now, I can't tell you whether this would work for every issuer, but there are some issuers that if you were to freeze just your Experian report, they might be okay pulling an alternative report and making a decision off of that instead of asking you to unfreeze that bureau. So this is a tricky one because you might need to go dig into Doctor of Credit or my FICO forums to go get a real answer, or you might have to experiment. So I can't tell you how to how this works, but I can tell you that in practice, sometimes issuers pull different bureaus reports and if one of them is frozen, sometimes issuers will pull other ones and it will be okay. And then sometimes it might not be okay. I can also tell you that while inquiries will show up really quickly, the new lines on your account that might affect how many accounts have you opened recently, maybe for a chase 5, 24. Those things don't show up immediately. Right. If you apply for a new credit card, that inquiry shows up that you applied when. But the new line of credit you have, that new credit card doesn't usually show up for a month or two. And so in that short window of time, that might actually be a good window to apply for a card if you're applying somewhere where the number of accounts matters way more than whether you have a few recent inquiries. And one other thing to consider is if you have a partner that you manage credit cards, points and miles with you each have your own separate credit report. They're completely different. They are not shared Unless you add someone as an authorized user to a card. They're kind of completely separate. So if you are in a situation where maybe you have opened seven cards in the last 24 months and you're really excited about a new card, maybe your partner might be able to open that card and take advantage of a really great welcome offer. And so something we try to do in our home is that we try to make sure that we're kind of always have one of us in a situation where we could open a card. So if one of us has a bunch of recent inquiries or new accounts or one of us is, you know, above 524, then maybe the other person will not be until, you know, we kind of bounce back and forth just in case, you know, there's some really amazing offer that we really want to take advantage of. We kind of keep ourselves flexible to be able to take advantage of it when it happens. So that's another strategy. One thing I wouldn't bother doing is trying to make any last minute fixes just a few days before you apply because your credit report changes after the next statement post and then gets reported. So it could be anywhere from, you know, let's call it 31 to 61 days before a change in your credit shows up on that credit report. Now one thing I would do is if you look at your credit report and something's wrong, I would absolutely reach out to the credit bureau and the issuer and try to dispute that and get it changed, that change could happen sooner. But if you realize that you closed a card, which I just recently did on my built card, I think I spent the full credit line and closed at like 98% utilization. There's nothing I could do about that. Right? I could pay that card off, but it's not going to show as lower utilization until the next month. And so that's just something you have to live with. And so if you think that that's going to be a major factor, then my advice is wait 30 to 60 days until that changes before applying for a new card. Now the degree to which these pre qualification tools will give you information is varying. I don't think they're going to give you an answer as to why you didn't get what you. Some of them go as far as to say here's the credit line we're willing to give you. Some of them don't. But I would always encourage you to use Those in advance. So you're not taking that hard inquiry you don't need. Those are some of the things I would do in advance. My advice, looping back to Jordan here. One of the things is consider which issuer it is, which I mentioned. But then another thing is consider whether some of that credit is unnecessary. And so a thing that I would often consider doing personally, and I've done this multiple times with Chase, is I know that Chase won't extend me any more credit. So if I want to get a new card, I can call up and say, hey, can we reduce my credit line on one of these cards so that I have less outstanding credit. And then I found that when I do that, I'm more likely to get approved for a new card because I'm not asking for them to extend more credit than they're comfortable with. But that situation is actually something you can sometimes rectify after you've been denied. So let's walk through what happens once you're denied. So if you apply for a card and you get a no, the first thing you know is that you're going to get a letter because the issuer is required by law within 30 days under the Equal Credit Opportunity act and the Fair Credit Reporting act to tell you which factor caused your denial. Now, that factor might not actually be true. There are cases of people who've said the documented reason they got was too many new accounts and they haven't opened any new accounts recently. So I think there can be clerical errors. But in general, I think it's a great hypothesis for what's going on and what might be causing this decision and whether there's something you can do about it. Now, they also usually say you're entitled to get a copy of the report they pulled for your denial for free, which many years ago was really cool. But since we've been able to get free credit reports weekly from all three major bureaus, this is kind of not that exciting because chances are you probably haven't used your weekly allotment. And if you have, then you can wait so seven days and do it again. But once you find out the reason, while you might not be able to fix anything, you might decide whether it's worth calling the bank to see what is possible. And so every bank has a phone number you can call to understand the situation and in some cases ask them to reconsider the decision they made. And so what this actually means is that someone might review your application. And in some cases with some banks, they're willing to move credit around and they're willing to reevaluate if there is information that was maybe necessarily wrong, maybe you've corrected something or in many cases I get a issue like this where my credit was locked and then I unfroze it and I can call in and say, hey, can you rerun my credit report? Some issuers realize this and ask you to unfreeze it. Some issuers just say no and then you have to call and talk to them. What they can't usually do is override any rules they have. So if they have some rule that says you can't open an account, if you have this many accounts, or if they say you had too many recent income inquiries, well, they're not going to be able to help there. But oftentimes if the decision really is related to maybe incorrect information, maybe you put the wrong stated income or the issue is related to how much credit they want to extend to you and you're willing to move it from another card. Those can often be factors in getting approval through. Now some issuers might not let you move credit from a business line to a personal line. So they might not be able to do the thing that you need to do to get approved. So you might need to manually call and get, let's say a business cards credit line reduced at an issuer and then call a reconsideration number and ask them if they'd be willing to, you know, reopen that card now that you have done this other thing. Whereas some banks are much easier where you can say, hey, I have this credit line over here, can we move it over? And they're willing to just do that usually within personal to personal or business to business, depending on the issuer. Sometimes only within a specific ein for a business. I know bank of America is like that. They will move credit around. Also sometimes there are rules with issuers where it's only a certain number of cards open in a certain number of days. And so if you were only able to open up a card, let's say once every 30 days and you applied on the 28th day and you called to get, you know, that reconsidered on the 31st day, that's something that they might be able to do. So definitely worth a call, especially if you just want to understand the decision. Sometimes they'll say, hey, wait till you get the letter in the mail. Sometimes they have been able to send me the letter digitally and sometimes they've been able to tell me what was on the letter. If that doesn't work if you're not able to get any luck reconsidering anything, then at the end of the day your answer is usually to wait two or three months and try again. And it really depends on the circumstance and why you might want to do that. So I think we've run through a lot of what you could do. Lower a credit line, give some cards, some utilization, maybe the opposite. Pay some cards off before the statement closes, let your inquiries get a little bit older and that kind of stuff. But I would encourage you before you apply to run those pre qualification tools so that you can see if you're going to be eligible before you actually make the hard inquiry. This episode is brought to you by Element. 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For all the hacks, listeners get a free 8 count sample pack of Elements most popular drink mix flavors with any purchase@AllTheHacks.com Element LMNT find your favorite flavor or share with a friend. That's allthehacks.com element LMNT thank you for being here today. You can find all the links, promo codes and discounts from all our partners@AllTheHacks.com deals. They're all brands I love and use, so please consider supporting those who support us. Okay, so we talked a little bit about how lowering a credit limit at a bank can help you get approved or can help change the profile of your credit. Now one way to do that is to just close a card and I can't tell you how many times I get this question. I think we've answered it a few in the past, but a different Jordan than the other question wrote in saying, you know, I have this Southwest plus card. Used to be a no fee card. Now it has a fee. I don't fly Southwest. I don't think I'm ever going to fly Southwest. Should I cancel this card or just Keep paying this $95 annual fee even though I'm not getting a lot of value out of it? Because he doesn't see a zero fee option? Now, one of the things he said was, I don't want to waste this credit limit on a card I won't use since that might make it harder to get other cards in the future. Now, a few things here. Jordan's thinking about this, right? He's like, well, I don't want to spend 95 on a card I don't use. And it's pretty hard to recoup the value of a card like the Southwest card if you're not flying Southwest. And he doesn't want to waste the credit limit on the card. The thing he didn't say that I'm going to interpret here is that he might have had this card for a long time and it's really contributing positively to the length of credit history on his credit report. And now that is a factor in your score. And closing a very old card could drop that average account age, which could hurt your score. And so that is an argument to keep it open. But unfortunately, he's right that there's not many ways to get value out of this card if he's not ever going to be flying Southwest. But one thing he did flag was he doesn't want to waste his credit limit here. You can lower a credit limit on a card to, I think with Chase, as little as $1,000. Other issuers, it might be different amounts without closing it. So if you're worried at all about tying up credit on a card, you know, you can pretty much mitigate that by lowering the limit on a card. And I've done that on certain cards in this exact circumstance that I've had for a long time. I don't use anymore. I want to keep on my credit report, but I don't really want to be tying up all my credit. Now, that doesn't help with the annual fee. And in fact, I'm looking right now the annual fee is $99, not $95. And so one option is to try to see if there's any way to get value out of this. When I look through what you get for $99 with this card, one of them is 3,000 anniversary points, which on Southwest, even if you got great value, would be somewhere around 45. So that covers half of it. So at least you'll know that by keeping this card open, you're racking up some number of points on Southwest. I can't remember if Southwest cards still allow you to transfer points among other Southwest members. That used to be a benefit of a Southwest card. I don't remember if it still is, but that might be a way that you could send these points to someone else in your family or pool them with someone. Now, if you're never going to fly Southwest, that's kind of it. Yes, I think getting Southwest points will hopefully one day be valuable even if those points get devalued. But other than that, I don't see how you're going to get a lot of benefit from this card other than that. Now you do get a promo code for 10% off each year. But again, that could be valuable to you, but only if you fly Southwest. Now I don't know if it's I'm not regularly flying Southwest or I will never fly them again. Those are obviously different scenarios. But changing to a no fee card in this particular case is not possible. In many other cases it is. So a lot of issuers do have no annual fee cards. That's something someone else can do. You can also call and tell the issuer, hey, I am looking at this card. It now has an annual fee. I don't even have a no annual fee. I'm not flying Southwest. Is there anything you can do? Now I've had offers of waiving the annual fee. Really great bonus offers for earning points. And I've had offers for nothing. And so that's at least something worth doing. It's not worth nothing. One other thing I didn't think about earlier is there is some value to keeping a card open even if you get no value. And I'm not saying this is a reason to do it. It's just something to keep in the back of your mind if you're kind of on the edge every now and then. There's some really compelling card linked offers on Chase, Amex, even Citi sometimes. And those card linked offers can sometimes make up for an annual fee, like a $99 annual fee. And so if I pulled up my cards, if I at my current cards with Chase right now I have one that has earned $364 from cash back in card linked offers, one that's earned 7650, one that's earned $37.08, one that has earned zero, another one that's earned zero, and one that's earned 98.49. So it looks like on average, you know, more than 50, 60 bucks from each card. So if that's something that you might be able to take advantage of, then there could be some value. I would never just say keep a card open in case some card linked offer opens up. But I will say that if you decide to keep the card open, maybe you will be surprised that there might be a card length offer that pops up that is valuable to you down the road because you have that card. Not a reason to do anything, but something to keep in mind. So if I were in your shoes though, unless this card was, you know, the only card I've had for 20 years and every other card was three years old, I would probably be leaning towards canceling it because the overhead of figuring out how to get value from a $95 annual fee is just not worth it. So that's probably what I would do. You could reduce your credit line. You could transfer your credit line beforehand, but at the end of the day it's probably not a great deal. But if you felt for the sake of your credit history you needed to keep it, there are a few options to kind of mitigate that. And you can at least punt a year and see if you get a retention offer. And you can obviously do that every year. Last piece. Every major bank tunes the system a little differently. I'm not going to run through all the application rules of every single bank. I'll just flag a couple of interesting anecdotes we talked about Chase524. Another one to consider with them is that you can only open two cards every 30 days. Again, these rules could change. None of them are published, official rules, but they also don't allow you to move credit between personal and business cards. And so that's a challenge for Amex. We did a whole episode on them, episode 236 and they have a bunch of rules. You know, you can only open one Amex card every five days, two every 90 days. You can only have five credit cards and 10 charge cards at a time. Charge cards being gold, platinum, green credit cards being most of the rest of them, all the co brand cards and they will give you a pop up if you're not eligible for welcome bonus usually beforehand. City. We did an episode in 228 where we went into all of this. Definitely more inquiry sensitive than most and they have a one card every eight day, two card every 65 day rule capital one. We did episode 242 going deep here. Definitely very sensitive to New accounts and new inquiries, they have a rule that's typically one Capital One card every six months. So if you just think about these rules, Capital One is saying one card every six months, and amex is saying one card every five days. Capital One saying you can only have one business charge card at a time. So when I wanted to open the Venture X business, I had to close the Spark cash plus Amex saying you can have 10 charge cards. So you kind of get a sense of some of these rules with, you know, how these banks are treating the kinds of customers they want and the number of cards they want them to open. So that's something to definitely keep in mind. Bank of America, we did a deep dive in episode 247. And, you know, I'd say the big thing to take away here is they definitely seem to have rules that are even better if you have a checking account with them. So that's definitely something I'd consider if you were trying to get approved by bank of America, They've got this two, three, four rule. Two cards in two months, three in 12 months, and four and 24 months. So you can check out more in that episode. And so for all the other issuers, they kind of. There are quirks for all of them. I would definitely do some homework if you feel like you're in a situation where you might want to understand the likelihood of getting approved by any and the ordering and the sequencing. And this is honestly where finding groups where you can talk to people is really valuable. So I know I've got a lot of value from other groups I've been in to do that. And so that's something to consider if you want to go deeper down this path. But if you want to find public sources, the doctor of credit comments are really, really great here. And, you know, I'd encourage you to just go and do a lot of research there. All right, so hopefully that was helpful to understand the framework of what kinds of decisions matter, how to think about this beforehand, how to think about this if it doesn't go your way, and really kind of how to prioritize thinking through issuers and sequencing and all that. So to close this out, I think most people approach credit card applications like a report card, right? They obsess over their score, they panic when it drops. But here I want you to leave rethinking that. If you're above a certain threshold, the score isn't what matters. What's on the report is what matters. And I would focus on that first. And I would think about the sequencing. Where do you want to apply 1st vs 2nd vs 3rd if you are planning on opening up a few different cards in a given period of time, because that really matters. Different institutions are very different and as you go and research that, you will find, like I mentioned, that certain ones are the ones to apply for first. Also, reconsideration is not really a negotiation. It's kind of an underwriter looking at the facts. So if you have facts that have changed, definitely call. If you're willing to move credit, definitely call. But this is not something where you're kind of bargaining for them to make a decision like you might in another business situation. But again, if you've been denied this is not one and done figure out which factor was an issue, change it, let it repost your credit report, wait two, three months and you can try again or try again at a different bank if you think it was really specific to that bank. So that's it for this episode. I really hope you got something out of this. If you did, the highest praise would be to share this episode or podcast with someone you think might enjoy it. If you have questions, go to allthehacks.com ama for Ask Me Anything and we're constantly going to be reviewing those and adding them to future episodes. That is it for this week. I will see you next week. There's a new way to sweetgreen Meet Graphs handheld, hearty and made for life on the move. With bold, chef crafted flavors, fresh ingredients and over 40 grams of protein, they're built to satisfy without slowing you down. Try wraps today in the app or@order.sweetgreen.com available at all participating locations.