Thread: How Many Credit Cards Should You Have?

" Capital One" is my provider.
I do have a question, But I don't want to go off topic so I'll take it to another thead or open a new one.

My experience has taught me to always read the fine print for things like credit cards. When I first started to use them as one of my tools to build credit up my credit ... those introductory offers really fooled me. Same with the balance transfer offers, which I do take advantage of often, but now know to watch for those transfer fees. Sometimes they are so much, the transfer isn't doing you any good in the end. But my credit score keeps going up & up so I must be doing something right.
Sam

I have 3 credit cards. I would probably be to scared to get any more. I have excellent credit because I always pay them off completely. I never only pay a minimum payment because, I'll only be paying interest

In approving mortgages for years the magic number is two. Too many and it affects your score. It's the average balance versus that individual credit card's available credit line NOT all added together. So if you've gor a limit of 5k and you've charged 3k it's going to hurt. If that one limit is 10k and you've charged 3k it will help your score.

I've never seen 7-8 card holders with credit scores over 850 unless they've had lots of credit for decades. Those with fewer tend to be higher. I'm going off those I've seen with scored above 800 and how they do it. Since I made it my business to get my score over 800, it's worked.

All of them are cashback with no annual fee. I only use 2-4 during any particular month and only carry 2 in my wallet. All are major credit cards (Visa, MC, Amex, Discover). Credit limits for each range from $5k to more than $40k. I pay balances in full every month. There are five that I don't use at all. If I tailor my usage to optimize cashback I can get roughly a nominal 2.5% cashback. For large or non-everyday purchases I check the websites to see if any of the cards offer coupons, etc. for the seller I'll be using.

I just have only one visa card.

I have 8 Credit cards good scores but all new since Jan. who knows

I think there is one major benefit of having at least two cards that hasn't been touched yet: redundancy.

That is to say, if you're making a purchase at a store and your card is declined for whatever reason (it's happened to me once because the magnetic stripe wore off, funny trick that seemed to work that the cashier did was to wrap it in a plastic bag and swipe again), then you still have another card to use. You can also keep your options open, Amex or Discover are not accepted everywhere as much as Visa/Mastercard are (there's even a joke in Futurama where it's the year 3,000 and Frye tries to use his Visa; "sorry they have been out of business for 500 years" Amex? 600 years. Discover? ...We don't take Discover).

One last good reason is if your credit card is stolen/lost/hijacked/locked-out (sometimes there are false positives) and you have to wait in the mail for a new one, rather than pay an expedition fee, you can just use one that was not in your wallet at the time. This is especially useful if you travel a lot and especially more so if you travel internationally.

And considering the latest events with chase, the more backup you have, the merrier!