Buy once, cry once method?
Hello everyone. I’m 18, and I’ve always been the type of person who wants financial responsibility,freedom, and intelligence in my life. I’m almost done with college (senior), and I want to start building my credit now. I’ve done a lot of research, but I’ve never really had anyone to talk to about this, so I wanted to ask you guys.
What happens if you use the “buy once, cry once” method with credit cards? Instead of getting one credit card and then waiting 6 to 12 months before getting another one, what if you got both around the same time? Personally, if I only got one card first, I’d probably wait 12 months because it feels safer. My thought process is that if you wait and then open a second card later, your average age of accounts gets cut down, and you also take another hit from the hard inquiry. So aren’t you basically getting dinged twice?
What if you opened two cards maybe 10 days apart instead? Since I don’t have any credit history yet, I’d just take the initial hit all at once. Then, six months later, lenders would see that I’m managing two cards, both with six months of history, 100% on-time payments, and under 10% utilization so I’d have a better chance at at 700+ credit score right? Would that actually be smart, or would it be dumb? Technically, your profile would be fuller, and you wouldn’t have to deal with your average age of accounts getting cut in half later.
(Low utilization because I don’t want to even chance debt btw)