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Introducing JLP’s One-Year Credit Card Experiment
By JLP | March 14, 2008
How many credit card solicitations (both phone calls and mail) do you get in one year?
I’m going to find out.
Starting today, I’m going to track all of the credit card offers my wife and I receive over the next year. I’ll keep a log in Excel and also mention them in a blog post either as they come in or once a week or month.
So, here’s what came in the mail today:
Friday, March 14, 2008
American Express – me
ESPN Visa – me
This experiment will conclude on Friday, March 13, 2009.
I haven’t decided if I want to include the specifics of the offer. In some ways that information would be fun to track but the amount of effort involved in tracking such information scares me a bit. What do you think? Should I include the offer information?
Topics: Blogging, Credit Cards | 15 Comments »
March 14th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
Question: have you signed up for the service that tells them not to send you offers? Can’t remember what it’s called off hand, but I’m guessing not.
Tracking all of the offer info would be tedious, I think. It might be fun to see what additional rewards they offer you (“15,000 bonus miles after first purchase!”) or something like that.
March 14th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Since I’m not the one that has to do it, I think you should definitely include all the offer information.
It’d be interesting to plot the introductory rates, new purchases rates and balance transfer rates against the Fed fund rate and prime rate. Just to see. Not expecting anything shattering, but could be interesting.
Good luck!
March 14th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Agreed, track some details, at the least APR
March 14th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
I agree that it would be nice knowing the APR offers, and maybe any rewards/cashback offers as well. You might want to reconsider starting any experiment on Friday the 13th
March 14th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
@One Short of History: my advisors are telling me that it may be the 14th
I think it would be interesting to know the basics.
March 14th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Maybe you should hook up with the person who keeps track of telemarketers:
http://phonespam.blogspot.com/
March 14th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Our mailboxes are frequently empty thanks to http://greendimes.com/ .
March 14th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
I’m guessing you meant “conclude” instead of “commence” on Friday, March 13, 2009.
This is a very cool idea and I’m eager to find out some hard numbers on the quantity of unsolicited offer sent out each year to people.
March 14th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
…or maybe your time might be better spent going through the “OPT OUT” procedure and tracking how well it works. It worked quite well for us. We were getting probably 1-2 offers per day until we opted out of promos with all the credit agencies. Now we probably only get 1-2 offers every 3 months. Much more secure this way and far less junk mail.
March 14th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
Shayan,
LOL! Me no good with English! I fixed my mistake.
March 14th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
I wouldn’t bother tracking what rewards they’re offering and all the details, but it might be interesting to mark if/when you get 0% APR offers and how long that 0% introductory rate is supposed to last. Usually that info is on the front of the envelope or in big font at the top of the letter, so the effort would be minimal. But it’d be interesting to see how those offers fluctuate given the changing economic times.
March 15th, 2008 at 6:21 am
The site we used to stop credit card offers is optoutprescreen.com. Since signing up, the credit card offers have just about stopped.
March 16th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Keep track of your wife’s offers vs yours. Many times, my wife and I will receive an offer for each of us, in the same day, but with different offers.
March 17th, 2008 at 11:24 am
GreenDimes here,
Appreciate the mention from from the commentor. glad we’re working out for you
March 17th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
JLP, I hope you have a new version of Excel – the one with more than 65.000 rows. You may need it.