The Wall Street Journal carries a piece on millenials signing up for credit cards.
The thrust of the piece is that there’s an escalating rewards war between banks, and they’re offering ever more lucrative cards. Millenials are most likely to take advantage of all the offers that come along.
There’s no discussion about what limits there are, what downsides there are, or what strategy to employ in signing up for credit cards. Here are 20 things to know about signing up for rewards cards.
And there’s no discussion about making sure if you’re going to get into credit card rewards that this makes sense if you can avoid spending more money than you otherwise would, and pay off your cards in full each month.
Kyle Allen is the opening of the piece, he and his wife have 40 open card accounts, and he says “I keep waiting for them to decline me, it just doesn’t happen.” He’s likely not applying for cards from Chase, or being careful about which Chase cards he applies for. The Journal doesn’t make mention of 5/24 limits.
Although they do highlight a card enthusiast who was turned down for a Chase Sapphire Reserve Card. Too many new accounts in the past 24 months seems the most likely reason why.
However Mary Xu took an interesting approach. She didn’t go seek a pre-approval in-branch. And very few people have luck overcoming such rejections over the phone. Xu took a different approach — and it worked.
She was so disappointed to be rejected for the Sapphire Reserve last October that she spent hours constructing a costume of the card out of cardboard. She sent the bank a photo of herself dressed up, hoping for a second chance.
She was approved about three months later.
(HT: Joe H.)
Wtf?
She got rejected for 5/24 and got approved for a costume?
I give her credit for the thought, but that’s a terrible costume. If that took her hours, I feel even worse for her.
I can get that the average millennial may not understand the difference between correlation and causation, but I figured that a writer for the Wall Street Journal might.
Apparently, I was wrong about that.
Thought leadership…or slow news day?
OMG that costume is sad. I was expecting something much more elaborate
Cool and creative. She came at this thing in a funky way. Spent time designing, copying the card image, and coloring – and it worked. Let’s give “credit” where it’s due.
This is the problem with millenials. They use too much time for stupidities instead of working. Most are lazy and think they have the right to get things for free while in my generation we worked hard to get those things. She looks like a moron with that card hanging on her neck but she thinks she is cool.
@all – give her a break. It’s clearly made out of metal…
If that thing took her so long to make I hope she reuses it for Halloween…
Gary you may want to check out CNN they are whipping up paranoia about laptop bombs. Apparently there are sources saying there are laptop bombs now can be turned on for a short period of time to make it through security yet still contain a working bomb. They are removing parts of the dvd drives apparently.
lol come on with the negativity. We’re a circle of people who talk about HUCA HUCA HUCA and the 35-step process to book a vacation, and we can’t appreciate a girl who finds a new way around the rules?
@Jim – “I give her credit for the thought,…”
I see what you did there 😉
Pathetic. No need to demean yourself when there are so many issuers with many good products who are happy to have your business.
I’ve been on the Amex blacklist for 20 years and I survive very nicely. During that time I’d wager I’ve easily charged >$1MM (no manufactured spend either) so that’s at least $30k + 20 annual fees in lost revenue for Amex that went to its competitors.
Happy April Fools day
@Sice
She did use it for Halloween, and this is the most critical sentence in the article from the card issuer’s perspective (the rest of the article probably induces heartburn for them):
“[Chase] got the sweet end of the deal over all,” she says. “I went to a Halloween party wearing it, and I’m positive they got at least a dozen referrals from me.”
April Fool’s?
So depemding what you look like in your photo they will or wont approve you. FDCPA violation.
either there are tons of holes in her stupid story (hey anything to sell an article *ahem* clickbait right)… but if she only got approved 3mo AFTER halloween, she didnt get jack shit for referrals. coz she didnt have the card to give out referrals. if she means that she made her friends aware of it, then her friends, presumably also millennials, must live under a rock if they didnt hear a pip about the CSR for the preceding 2mo since it launched.
anyways, not sure why Gary added his own conjecture, but I’m of the opinion that a few months later she happened to get a pre-approval. or perhaps she used the trick TPG used to get approved for his CSR 😉