How many CC is too many and is it bad to close them? (rate, credit)

[highlanderfil]

I probably have around 15. Most of them were opened due to a high sign-up bonus. I keep some for the annual perks (e.g., a free hotel night the value of which exceeds the annual fee). I don't use them all on a consistent basis, though. Pay them off at the end of each month and never carry a balance. Closing cards does hit your credit score in a negative way, but it's not a major hit and doesn't affect you super long-term. My rule of thumb is if I've not used a card in six months to a year, it's better to close it than keep it open and risk it ending up in a hacker's hands. Credit score is high-sevens/low-eights, depending on whom you ask. No debt beyond a mortgage.

My spend basically goes as follows:

Cards in my daily wallet:

- Bilt Mastercard (annual fee: $0): rent (fee-free) and five small monthly purchases to generate points from rent. I also use it for travel purchases for which my other travel cards don't provide multiplier returns (e.g., hotels booked through third-party websites)

- Amex Platinum (through Morgan Stanley) (annual fee: $695, "comped" via jumping through a few hoops with MS): travel purchases direct from hotels/airlines, purchases for which utilizing the return protection benefit might be useful, purchases that take advantage of Amex Offers (I generally don't tend to buy things just because there's an offer, but some of them have been pretty useful over the years)

- Costco Visa (annual fee: $0): Costco purchases and gas

- Amex Bonvoy Business (annual fee: $125): a new-to-me card I'm currently using as a primary to get the sign-up bonus 125K points. Remains to be seen whether I'll keep it beyond the first year. It's $30 more expensive than the MC I also have (more below), but it gives 7% off on Marriott stays which may end up paying for the difference.

Other cards that live at home and are used as needed:

- Amazon Prime Business Amex (annual fee: $0): signed up for the $100 Amazon gift card (might have been $150 or even $200 - I'm a bit fuzzy on the details at the moment); I use it only on Amazon for the 5% (and occasional 10%) "cashback" and have now closed my Amazon Visa that I had held for years for being redundant. Main advantage over the Visa is return protection.

- IHG Premium Mastercard (annual fee: $95): IHG hotel purchases and my YouTube Premium billing is on it for some reason. Well worth the annual fee for the free night award. My wife and I both have this card.

- Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Mastercard (annual fee: $95): one of this one or the Amex will eventually win out as the one Marriott card I keep. I was going to cancel it after I got the Amex, but got an offer to knock down the annual fee by $50 to keep it open this year.

- Hilton Honors Surpass Amex (annual fee: used to be $95, now $150): had a high sign-up bonus (although there's an even better one now, oh well), but I think this one is on its way out. There's a new annual $200 Hilton bonus, so there might have been an argument for keeping it around were it a once-a-year thing, but it's broken up by quarter. No free annual night, either (unless I spend 15 grand on it, which, yeah, no). Does convey Gold status, but I get that with the Platinum Amex.

- Hilton Honors Business card (annual fee: $95): similar story as above. Might also ditch it or just get a $0 AF Hilton card.

- Amex Green Card (annual fee: $150): had my mom get this one for the all-time high 60K point bonus, plus 10% off travel discount, which made it pay for itself basically immediately, but also likely on its way out after the first year. Will probably just knock it down to one of the Everyday cards.

- Delta Gold Amex (annual fee: $99): my wife is the only one in the family that has it; might be worth keeping for the 15% discount off point redemptions and free first checked bag in the U.S., but we'll see.

- Chase Sapphire (annual fee: $95): it's been my wife's default card for ages now, but I'm wondering if it's still worth it. It did just add an annual credit of $50 off Chase travel portal hotel stays, so maybe? The travel partner redemptions are good, but with all our other cards we just don't use it often enough.

- Verizon Visa (annual fee: $0): the only thing I have on it is my Verizon bill (and Starbucks account refill, which I need to change). Costs nothing and actually makes me money as it's the only non-debit card that gives a monthly discount on my mobile bill with autopay.

- Choice Privileges Select Mastercard (annual fee: $95, waived for the first year): got it for the sign-up bonus, unlikely to keep after.

- AAdvantage Business Mastercard (annual fee: $99, waived for the first year): same as the one above.

[prospectheightsresident]

I have 7 (I consider all of my Amex cards to be charge cards as well as credit cards as they all have the pay over time option):

Amex Platinum
Amex Gold
Amex Delta SkyMiles
Chase Sapphire Preferred (I thought I was getting the reserve )
United Explorer MileagePlus
USAA Limitless 1.5% Cashback (it was limitless 2.5% cashback for years, which is when I used it for everything, earning literally thousands in cash back rewards over that time)
BOA Mastercard Cash Rewards (my oldest card and my longest bank . . . I got my first BoA account when I was a high school senior)

Being military, I don't pay annual fees for any of my cards, so I see no need to close any (forget about the impact it would have on my credit). I just have to make sure that I don't go too long with charging something on my less frequently used cards and risk them being closed. I'd actually like to open a Chase Sapphire Reserve Card given that we do quite a bit of travel each year and that $300 travel credit per year is pretty enticing).

[jiminnm]

I think 20-25 credit cards are the limit. You can't get your wallet in your pocket with more.


I have 5 cards:
Costco Visa
Amex Blue Cash
Discover
Citi Mastercard
Fidelity Visa


These all are cash back cards, returning 1-5%. We pay no fees for any of these and all the cards pay us to use them.

[ShampooBanana]

I have only two credit cards. My Discover was my first that I got way back in 1996 at 19 years old, and another is a Capital One Venture I've now had for about 10 years. My credit score last I checked was 838. I guess the number of cards you have really doesn't make a difference. More important is I've bought and paid off 7 homes, bought and paid off probably 10 or 11 cars/trucks, and haven't missed a single bill payment in probably at least 15 years and my credit cards get paid off that very month on the pretty rare occasions I use them.

[prospectheightsresident]

Originally Posted by prospectheightsresident

I have 7 (I consider all of my Amex cards to be charge cards as well as credit cards as they all have the pay over time option):

Amex Platinum
Amex Gold
Amex Delta SkyMiles
Chase Sapphire Preferred (I thought I was getting the reserve )
United Explorer MileagePlus
USAA Limitless 1.5% Cashback (it was limitless 2.5% cashback for years, which is when I used it for everything, earning literally thousands in cash back rewards over that time)
BOA Mastercard Cash Rewards (my oldest card and my longest bank . . . I got my first BoA account when I was a high school senior)

Being military, I don't pay annual fees for any of my cards, so I see no need to close any (forget about the impact it would have on my credit). I just have to make sure that I don't go too long with charging something on my less frequently used cards and risk them being closed. I'd actually like to open a Chase Sapphire Reserve Card given that we do quite a bit of travel each year and that $300 travel credit per year is pretty enticing).

Recently added the Amex Hilton Honors Aspire card. I got it primarily for the Free Night Credit each year and the accompanying diamond status. A bud of mine is using his FNC to book a $700/night room during his coming trip to Japan.

[davebarnes]

Originally Posted by jiminnm

I think 20-25 credit cards are the limit. You can't get your wallet in your pocket with more.

How many can you fit on your phone?

[Sonic_Spork]

I think that a person's discipline in how they use credit cards is vastly more important than how many they do or do not have (a point well made already by a number of posts here.)

What I wonder is...if you were to decide that you had a card you no longer wanted to use, can you call them and ask that it be locked in such a way that all charges will be declined automatically unless you call to unlock it? I know that there's an option to "freeze" a card in the online accounts of most of them, and you'd think that this would do the trick but it might not.

I say this because I had an issue with a card that my father in law had (he died last year) and I was trying to get the last charges paid off as he was on his deathbed and I froze the account after I made sure to set up new payment methods for anything important, and I was making tons of phone calls to cancel all of the automatic charity/politician/lobbyist donations, mail order garbage, extended warranties and other scammy things he'd fallen for... And I assumed that with it "frozen" via the online account tools, no more of the sketchy charges could come though, but I was wrong. They let through a charge to one of those mail order companies...Bradford Exchange or Danbury Mint, one of those...for over $300. And by the time I realized it'd happened, there was a late fee. I got the charge paid off, called and explained that I had thought the account was frozen, told them my father in law had passed (since by then, he had) and they said they'd reverse the fee and close the account. Well, for several months we received a monthly bill in the mail for the amount of the late fee, every time I'd call and they assured me the account was closed with a zero balance, and they had no idea why bills were still coming. I even offered to just pay it and was told they had no way to process a payment on the account.

It was really annoying. That was a Citi card, by the way.

So yeah...if I were going to put a card "on ice" so to speak, I'd very much like to make sure that no charges CAN be made on it so that I did not have to closely monitor it the way I do my live cards. If that can be done effectively without closing an account, that's probably the way to go.

Though another point to be aware of... Years ago when I had to declare bankruptcy, I had an old Fingerhut account from when I was barely an adult. I had not used it in over a decade, but hadn't bothered to close it, since it was one of my oldest accounts. But it had a zero balance, like I said, paid off for ages, and inactive. Obviously I did not list it among my accounts to be discharged in bankruptcy, why would I? Yet for some reason after my filing, they somehow included themselves. It has showed up as "derogatory" and "included in bankruptcy" on one of my bureaus since then. I called to complain, I filed disputes with the bureau and everything. The only response I got was, "we have verified that this was in fact your account." I mean yeah, it was, but it had a zero balance and wasn't on my bankruptcy, which I'd explained in the letters I sent. No one cared. Now I'm close to it all dropping off anyways so I am no longer inclined to fight it.

Point being, I guess it is possible for the holders of your inactive accounts to decide to opt themselves into blackening your good name in the unfortunate event that you ever need to declare bankruptcy, even if you have not owed them a cent in a decade. I have no idea how or why, but...it happened to me. /shrug

[Aspe4]

I have 3 cards:

1. I use like a debit card for everyday purchases and pay the balance off on a daily basis. I use this for cash back rewards.
2. I have another I use for spending on trips or for somewhat major purchases and I pay the balance off by the end of the billing cycle. This one also has cash back rewards.
3. I have had this card for 23 years and it has the highest spending limit, but it has no rewards attached to it. I almost never use it, but every three months I make a small purchase with it so that it will stay active; if my bank was to cancel this card due to inactivity, the age of my accounts would drastically drop, as would my overall credit card limit.

[Hemlock140]

We have 5, but almost exclusively use the one with the best rewards, and pay it off every month before it gets billed so never have to pay interest. I discovered that the credit score does drop when an account is closed, so the other 4 get used once every 6 months or so, for some small purchase, then paid off before the bill comes. None of the 5 ever gets any interest from us, but they still keep raising our credit limits, and that raises the credit score, with a smaller percentage of credit usage. I'm currently at a score of 860.

[BostonMike7]

I think I have 7 or 8.

I only use 1. All others have a $0 balance and the one I used gets paid off each month. I use whichever one has the best rewards. I never close out the other ones. I've never paid interest. My credit score is >800.