While the hard inquiries from credit card applications can hurt your credit score, there's a grace period that allows you to make multiple inquiries without incurring negative marks for each check. Depending on the scoring method, you have between 14 and 45 days to combine hard inquiries into a single credit score impact. The grace period only applies to checks of an identical type, so a car loan or mortgage application will always count as a separate hard inquiry from a credit card application.