Applying to multiple credit cards at the same time

TL;DR: Don’t do it.

I think it can be tempting to want to apply to multiple credit cards on your credit card wish list at the same time, especially if you’ve been pre-approved and/or your credit score is high enough.

Speaking from personal experience, I tried this once where I applied to 3 on the same night. I got instantly approved to my first one. I got approved after a couple days to my second one, with a significant cut in my credit limit. My third credit card was approved after a week and the credit limit was just $500. My credit score also cratered 40 points to a place where I was a little concerned, and thankful I was not looking for a mortgage.

Maybe your credit score is high enough and you’re not looking to borrow money any time soon, and this would make sense. You get the benefits earlier, and the credit score drawdown is temporary (assuming you pay off everything on time and have a low utilization etc…).

But otherwise, I’d recommend waiting a couple months at least in between pulls so your credit score has time to recover from recent hard pulls.

The drawdown of waiting to apply for new credit cards is usually on the order of $10s, at the max, for most people. It’s not worth potentially ruining your credit score and/by potentially getting rejected by a credit card.

It also gets annoying asking to get credit limit increases later for your multiple credit cards.

Happy credit score/card managing,

TheJKW

P.S. One rumor though is that there is only one pull if you apply to multiple credit cards run by the same bank. This is only a rumor and not personally verified, if you have tried this let us know what happened!