We are facing a slumping economy, or possible a recession. Most of financial companies can’t afford to offer crazy sign-up opportunities. Last year, Chase Freedom Card offer $250 bonus after first purchase and University of Iowa WorldPoints Platinum Plus MasterCard offered 25,000 bonus points which can be redeemed for $250 after spending $250 on this card. However, we don’t have any exciting sign-up opportunities this year except for the American Express Business Gold Rewards Card which is offering 25,000 bonus points after spending $1000 on this card before October 1, 2008. Fortunately, many credit card issuers are still offering great sign-up bonuses for certain credit cards (Credit Card Sign-Up Offers-June 2008).
Scott is my friend and has benefited a lot by reading this blog. Today he sent me a summary of his mini AOR. He agreed to let me show his AOR result and preparation process at MyCardBlog.Com. I’d like to give you guys more experience about AOR, and maybe you can play AOR by yourself in the near future.
Pre-AOR Preparation
- Increase credit limit online (avoid hard pulls!)
- Paid off all the balances on the 3 credit cards
- Write down all the cards that I would apply for (reference post: Credit Card Sign-Up Offers June 2008)
- Goal—sign-up bonuses (no BT due to current economic situation)
Credit Scores as from Credit Secure from American Express
- Experian: 772 (1 inquiries)
- TransUnion: 766 (1 inquiries)
- Equifax: 778 (0 inquiries)
Current Acocunts:
- Citi Dividend Platinum Select Card, $12K, since October 02
- AMEX Blue Cash, $10K, since July 06
- CapitalOne No Hassle Cash Rewards Card, since June 07
Age: 27, HHI: 110K
AOR Result
- Citi Professional Card with ThankYou Network–Deferred/Declined
- Citi Business Card with ThankYou Network—–Approved, $10k CL
- Citi Platinum Select AAdvantage World MasterCard—-Approved, $7K CL
- Chase Freedom Visa Card—————————Approved, $7K CL
- AMEX Preferred Rewards Gold Card————Approved, $6K CL
- AMEX In Chicago——————————-Declined
- AMEX Starwood Preferred Guest Card—————–Approved, $8K CL
- Chase Sony Card————–Declined (too many inquiries)
- Discover More Card——–Approved, $6K CL (use code to get $100 after spending $500)
Total earnings is around $ 750(100 points=$1, 100 miles=$1) in about 40 mins!
Learn more about AOR from this post.
Update: Scott sent me his credit scores: Experian 728, TransUnion 736, Equifax 764
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June 16th, 2008 at 7:27 am
This is a great blog. Forgive my lack of understanding, but what does AOR stand for? Also, it’d be interesting to see what his credit score will look like after your friend applied for all these credit cards.
June 16th, 2008 at 8:49 am
AOR means App-O-Rama. I have a post about AOR on this blog. Yes, I will update the information about Scott’s credit score after mini AOR.