{"id":8348,"date":"2025-10-16T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=8348"},"modified":"2025-10-16T08:39:47","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T14:39:47","slug":"thursday-thought-the-value-of-a-hard-credit-pull","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/16\/thursday-thought-the-value-of-a-hard-credit-pull\/","title":{"rendered":"Thursday Thought: The Value of a Hard Credit Pull"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>One of the \u201cendearing quirks\u201d of churners is the uncanny ability to assign a (probably incorrect) cash value to non-cash instruments. For example, I\u2019ll do it right now:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>What\u2019s the value of a Hyatt point? 2.0 cents<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>What about a Delta SkyMile? 1.1 cents, but only if you fly Delta and have a Delta credit card<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>What\u2019s about an AAdvantage mile that never gets redeemed? 0.0 cents<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Ok smart guy, what about a Bud Light in the Lufthansa First Class Terminal? -$46 per can, <em>*waves hands* <\/em>because something something opportunity cost<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>How about a hard credit pull? This could be a complex calculation involving things like the average credit card sign-up bonus value, the opportunity cost of minimum spend on a 2% card, the loss of a potential 5\/24 slot, the small probability that it causes eyes to end up on your account, how much more an incremental sign-up bonus will increase your happiness, and the mental overhead of additional accounting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But, I like to keep things simple to make it easy to decide if any particular deal is worth a hard pull:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019d always trade $800 for a hard pull on my credit report (and yes, I\u2019d trade $800,000,000 for one million pulls on my report, interested parties can reach out). The further below $800 I get, the less interesting a deal is for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, my expectation value for a hard pull is $800.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What\u2019s the point of this article? Great question and I\u2019m not sure I know (exactly what you wanted to hear from a, uhh &#8220;trusted&#8221;, source), but it does serve as a measuring stick: it\u2019s pretty easy to find credit cards that require a hard pull and have a sign-up bonus or ongoing value worth at least $800. If you\u2019re not getting that, perhaps question why and whether or not you should do something different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Happy Thursday!<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"168\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/image-21.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12614\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\" style=\"font-size:14px\">Other churner focused endearing quirks? Mismatched socks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the \u201cendearing quirks\u201d of churners is the uncanny ability to assign a (probably incorrect) cash value to non-cash instruments. For example, I\u2019ll do<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wisdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8348"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12617,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8348\/revisions\/12617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}