The impact of a hard inquiry stays with you for 2 years. You only see a reversal of lost points after the inquiry is removed form your report. The second part of your statement makes zero sense.. Higher FICO = lower interest rates when you buy a house or a car. Obviously you want to be optimized for borrowing money. Why would you throw away unnecessary money on interest?!?
I've not seen any scenario where the impact of a hard inquiry lasted that amount of time. Now if you actually get issued a line of credit perhaps. Granted, I stopped borrowing money like this many years ago so I don't know if things have changed, but it does not change the point I was trying to make.
Don't optimize for borrowing. You have to continually borrow (i.e. go into debt) in order to do that and it's a very dangerous game.
This is my opinion of course, but also that of the majority of financially well to do people. Don't borrow money. Don't go into debt. Just don't.
A mortgage is one exception but you'd have to have a pretty major change in scores for this to actually impact the rate which a bank/credit union would give you. 20 points here is meaningless unless you're already borderline. And if you're borderline, you've got things to clean up before worrying about a house to begin with.
Don't borrow for a car, a laptop, a phone, school, etc. I know this goes against traditional indoctrinated thinking in this debt-laden society we've created, but you'll be far better off for it in practically all aspects of life. It does require you to live within your means though. A real issue for many