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Hey! You’re reading an outdated Free First Class Next Month series. Check out the latest version published in April of 2015 here.

This is the fourth post in a monthlong series that started here. Each post will take about two minutes to read and may include an action item that takes the reader another two minutes to complete. I am writing this for an audience of people who know nothing about frequent flier miles, and my goal is that by the end, you know enough to fly for free anywhere you want to go. Previously Signing Up for Travel Loyalty Programs.

The main source of frequent-flier miles is credit card sign up bonuses. If managed correctly, they can be used to earn millions of miles without negatively impacting your credit score. In the game of flying for free, your most valuable asset is your credit score.

So today’s post will focus on getting your free credit reports from the three main credit bureaus and a little explanation of the credit score. Start by going to annualcreditreport.com, the only site where you can get a free, no-strings-attached credit report from the three bureaus once a year.

Type in the information and look at or print out all three reports, which should all be slightly different. Make sure the information is accurate and that no one has stolen your identity.

The reports don’t include your credit score. If you think you’re right around 700, a generally accepted cutoff for getting in on some of the mega-sign-up bonuses, you may want to purchase your score for $8 as offered from one of the individual agencies.

From talking to people, the number one thing that holds people back from Free First Class is a fear of harming their credit scores. Simply put, if you manage your applications well, and you don’t have a mortgage or refinance application coming up, you can apply for 3-4 credit cards every few months without fear!

If you’ve heard any semblance of a personal-finance talk, alarm bells are probably going off in your head. But FICO is the most widely-used credit scoring model in the US, and FICO’s official website lists “My score will drop if I apply for new credit” as a fallacy.

Here’s why:

Only 10% of your credit score is based on inquiries derived from applying for new credit like credit cards. That 10% is swamped by other factors, all of which are helped by getting more credit cards!

Specifically, a big part of the 30% listed as “Amounts owed” is percentage of credit utilized. A new credit card will come with a new credit line, say $5,000. If your monthly spending on that card is just $500, then your credit utilization is only 10%. This will make you look like a good credit risk, causing your score to rise.

The extra credit lines from new cards, the payment histories you generate, and the relationships you establish with banks will all help your credit score over time.

If you monitor your credit score closely, you will notice a decline in your credit score from each new credit card application. I see my score fall 2-5 points when I apply for a card. Then you will see your score rise slowly over time until you are at or above where you started.

I’ve gotten more than a dozen cards in the last year, and my credit score is higher now than ever. Other people with longer histories of even more extreme credit card “churning” as we call it have similar stories of maintaining extremely high credit. Here’s a documented example of someone applying for 11 cards in a year and seeing his score rise.

Read this short post by Gary Leff in which he explains how applying for cards will impact your score. His explanation is better than mine, but here are my cliff notes:

  1. Applications for a new credit card have a small negative effect on your credit that totally falls off within two years.
  2. Getting approved for new cards increases your total credit line. This decreases the ratio of how much credit you’re using to how much you have. This helps your credit score.
  3. New accounts decrease the average age of your credit lines, which hurts your score at first. But as those accounts age, this effect reverses and having the old accounts helps your score.
  4. Scores above 760 are gravy. 760 qualifies for the best rates, so anything above that isn’t helpful.
  5. The biggest exploiters of credit card sign ups and bonuses have maintained their great credit scores.

You’ve checked your reports and hopefully had your fears of hurting your credit assuaged. In just a few days, we’ll be applying for the biggest bonuses out there. Tomorrow we’ll discover how many you can apply for with your spending patterns.

Continue to Putting All Your Spending on Credit Cards.

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