There are lot of banks which do not give bonus if you apply for the same card within 24 months or 48 months. There is also Chase which does not look into your application should you have got approved in your personal account at least 5 cards in the last 24 months.
Now Chase does have some good cards - notably the INK series or the Southwest cards. There are few other cards too which help accumulate Ultimate Rewards points. Amex, Citi, Barclay card, Capital One and many others also have similar rules though not officially codified. But the analysts do make a point of checking the number of open accounts (not applications rather the accounts that were opened and are in active state, the length of closed accounts among other things).
So in these scenarios, I created a simple tracker which just keeps track of the last 3-4 or max 5 cards. 3-4 to be on the conservative side while 5 is to err. This tracker is simple excel where you note down each member of the family and the last 3 cards and year / month when you applied. A simple excel function will subtract current month/year from the last applied month/year which is the only calculation needed for the purpose of 5/24 tracker. Many times I see some family member is near 12 months or 18 months and rather than apply for the next high rewards credit card one might as well wait for 6 more months or at least 3 more months and then try chase credit cards and then apply for this card. The whole rolling period is well captured using this method and the tracker itself takes not more than 15 minutes of your time to develop.
While on the topic of credit cards, the standard banks of Citi, Amex, Chase, Bank of America apart from main credit card issuing companies of Barclaycards and Capital One, continue to offer similar bonuses across few categories of cards. The award accumulation is harder but simpler than actually putting your butt on the seat or doing any mileage runs. So called spending or manufactured spending or churning is pretty much dead with the exception of the walmart money order route which is also not worth the return on investment. Money order route is practically gone. So the only spend is the valid spend. So if you have any big ticket spending coming up by all means go ahead and apply for a bunch of cards from the above banks and rake in some points and free enough vacation.
Now Chase does have some good cards - notably the INK series or the Southwest cards. There are few other cards too which help accumulate Ultimate Rewards points. Amex, Citi, Barclay card, Capital One and many others also have similar rules though not officially codified. But the analysts do make a point of checking the number of open accounts (not applications rather the accounts that were opened and are in active state, the length of closed accounts among other things).
One way to look is old fashioned keep track of statements. But it is also super slow. Another is to keep a tracker open on start date of the card or month of the card when you open it. Yet another way popularized by blogs is to check credit reports sites such as Credit Sesame or Credit Karma among many others. You can also request free credit reports from all three bureaus and pour over it manually to establish the accounts opened in the rolling 24 months. Now many folks have more than 5 cards so it makes sense to stop once you go past 5 credit card opening. Further, if you use tracker it could fasten things. If you go the annual credit report route, then there is an aspect of timing as typically the reports are read at the end of the year.
If you do read in the middle or in randomly still you will get only half picture as you might not get picture of the rolling 24 months. Then there is the "apply and see what happens" route which is not advisable in general. Nor is the whole reconsideration line beyond a point. At start you do this but once you have been doing this for more than 5 or 10 years there reaches a point where you do not necessarily chase points but rather target bunch few cash back rewards or specific airline or hotel rewards.
So in these scenarios, I created a simple tracker which just keeps track of the last 3-4 or max 5 cards. 3-4 to be on the conservative side while 5 is to err. This tracker is simple excel where you note down each member of the family and the last 3 cards and year / month when you applied. A simple excel function will subtract current month/year from the last applied month/year which is the only calculation needed for the purpose of 5/24 tracker. Many times I see some family member is near 12 months or 18 months and rather than apply for the next high rewards credit card one might as well wait for 6 more months or at least 3 more months and then try chase credit cards and then apply for this card. The whole rolling period is well captured using this method and the tracker itself takes not more than 15 minutes of your time to develop.
While on the topic of credit cards, the standard banks of Citi, Amex, Chase, Bank of America apart from main credit card issuing companies of Barclaycards and Capital One, continue to offer similar bonuses across few categories of cards. The award accumulation is harder but simpler than actually putting your butt on the seat or doing any mileage runs. So called spending or manufactured spending or churning is pretty much dead with the exception of the walmart money order route which is also not worth the return on investment. Money order route is practically gone. So the only spend is the valid spend. So if you have any big ticket spending coming up by all means go ahead and apply for a bunch of cards from the above banks and rake in some points and free enough vacation.
