Wife-o-rama!

We just completed a seven credit card app-o-rama for Mrs. PFD. Five applications resulted in instant approvals and two were deferred. Here’s the rundown:

AMEX BUSINESS REWARDS GOLD: Instant approval, $5,000 minimum spend. My wife set up a side business last fall and recently she had the good fortune to get targeted for a 75,000-point Business Gold offer with the first-year fee waived. She was also targeted for a 100,000 Platinum card offer, but that one did not have the fee waived, and with the lounge access going away, the extra 25,000 points and the $200 credit don’t make up for the annual fee. Please use the comments below to explain what a wondrous product the Platinum is and what a horrible mistake we made in not getting it. Go on, I dare you. What? All right then, didn’t think so.

CITI PLATINUM ADVANTAGE: Instant approval with a healthy credit line, 50,000 miles, $3K minimum spend. I love Citi so much! One of these days, we will stop having kids and will be ready for one of those nice vacations where you fly on a plane to a nice place to see and do nice things, and the PFD household will have some AA miles stockpiled for that day. And hopefully American won’t get all Delta-y on us in the meantime.

BARCLAYCARD ARRIVAL: Deferred. This, of course, would be the 40,000-point, $3K minimum spend offer. Also, I have an affiliate link for this offer and all of you should sign up for this card immediately, unless you already have it, which you almost certainly do, so I’m really wasting everybody’s time here with my half-assed marketing pitch. Anyway: if approved, I plan to use part of the bonus to pay for three nights at Holiday Inns so that we can claim a 100,000-point Big Win from Priority Club. Aside from that, no immediate plans for those points, though I’m sure we’ll think of something.

CHASE: We gave them a rest this time around. They have a lot of great travel deals, but we’re short on travel time and travel energy at the moment.

THAT WELLS FARGO 5% CASH BACK CARD: Deferred, I’m curious to see what happens here. My wife applied for this one last fall but they rejected her on the grounds that her income was too low. And that’s interesting, because they had no problem approving me, and my wife and I have exactly the same amount of income, what with the whole marriage thing. My theory is that the guy who took her application in-branch marked her income down as zero since she’s a homemaker. We called the recon line and asked them to think it over and they responded a few days later saying that my wife’s income is too low. Ladies and gentlemen, a round of applause for Wells Fargo!

We let it go because my wife was about 23 months pregnant (or so it seemed at the time), but it’s worth another try.

TOYS R US MASTERCARD AND DILLARD’S AMEX: Instant approvals, albeit with small credit lines ($1,200 and $800), These are both GE cards, so I figured I’d investigate them for you, my internet friends, to see if they’re any good. If they are, the PFD household will have no problem spending any gift cards that come our way.

Thinking more broadly about GE, I like the idea of cultivating a crop of credit cards I can occasionally harvest whenever the marketing conditions are right. And “credit card farming” would be a cool-sounding title for this hobby, too.

FUEL REWARDS MASTERCARD: Instant approval. I’m curious to see what Comenity Bank is like, and I figure a card like this is as likely as any to have some nice promos.

Speaking more generally about the last three cards, I’m a little bored with the current state of credit card coverage in the blogosphere. It’s over-saturated, but only for certain products, which is to say I will go insane if I see one more Boarding Area blogger remind me about that Friday restaurant promo for the Chase Sapphire. (I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE, OKAY?) So I figure, let’s go off the beaten path a bit and see what happens. It’ll probably be nothing, but you never know.