x2 on MaMonte's post.

It is better to have a couple. It's bad for your score to open and close cards constantly. Just think twice about saving 30% by opening a card if you will never use it again and cancel it. That 30% isn't worth it in the long run.

 

weve just found it easyer to pay with plastic (gas , grocery, nights out) rather than try to carry the cash then simply transfer the payment from checking to the card balance which allows us to show activity on the account, as long as you remain currant the points build up or the intrest rate can be reduced if you request, the problem for most is they don't bother to ask for reduced rates on anything...most bussinesses have walk away rates, car rental,hotel the service industry...they will reduce rates if you are prepared to walk or throw in a service at no charge...you buy the tires they thow in balance and rotation so on. "Ask and ye shall recieve"...unfortenatly this does'nt work if you appear to be a risk.....

 

I've been looking into this a lot more lately since we're coming up on buying a house soon.

I have 7 cards open. I like to have somewhat of a variety-there are some places that only accept certain types of cards (ie only Visa, etc), and each of my cards have different rewards (some give me extra rewards for shopping at specific places or spending on specific items). A couple of the accounts are very old, and I'm just hanging onto them for their age benefit to my score.

I don't typically carry any balances- I just use the cards for their perks and benefits. With rewards points, I end up getting a $50 gift card every couple months. Plus you get all of the security of buying stuff with credit cards (most credit cards have a book of security perks from limited liability if the card is stolen, to rental insurance, to extended warranties).

From what I understand, the actual number of cards is somewhat irrelevant- I'd try to keep open at least 3, and probably not too many more than 10 (I figure it would start to get hard to try and monitor them all monthly to check for fraudulant charges if you got too many).

The bigger concern here is your available credit to used credit ratio. If you've only got 1 card with $1000 limit, and you've got $800 of purchases on it- thats bad; you want to keep your debt ratio low to show that you can manage credit and not use up every bit you have.

That is just a small portion- there are a lot of different categories.

35% of your score is payment history- whether or not you've paid past debts and paid them on time. Running behind on payments and foreclosing effects this category.

30% is your current debt level (ideally you want to be under about 30% of credit used)- if all of your credit cards are maxed out, this means that you may be overextended already- and may not be a good candidate to handle more credit.

15% is your length of history. The longer you've had credit, the more likely you are to be able to manage it well, and the more likely they are to loan you money. This is why you don't really want to close old accounts.

10% is based off "new credit" inquiries. So if you've applied for loans and credit cards 20 times in the last couple months, then this part will tank. When you apply for a loan, they want to see that you aren't just stacking up massive amounts of credit (could be a prediction that you may go into bankruptcy and just want to accumulate a lot of stuff before the debts are written off)

10% is based off of your credit mix. They want to see that you have had both revolving credit (credit cards) and installment loans (home loan, student loan, etc). This isn't a category I would worry a ton about unless the only loan types you've had are revolving- and even then, the other stuff is a much bigger part of your score.

Why? If they did not charge an annual fee, you would've been better off with them open.

As said above, this doesn't make a bit of difference to your credit score- its like it does not exist. The only thing that would exist is any cash you could take out for a downpayment on something you'd like to buy- but as for your credit score, it will be unaffected by any debit cards.

It sounds to me like unless your mastercard credit card has a large limit, that closing the other cards may have been a bad idea. You want to keep your credit utilization level low.


A credit score is far from irrelevant now- IMO its more important than ever now a days. If you don't have a pretty good score, chances are you're going to have a tough time getting any sort of large loan- especially a home loan. It used to be that they could fudge numbers on your application and lend to you as "sub prime" with a crappy score- but now with a bad score, you won't be able to get any loan. Even with a mediocre score- you're going to get killed on interest rate if you can find anyone to lend to you.


If you're serious about learning more about credit scores- I'd read up here:

http://credit.about.com/od/creditrep...reditscore.htm

Then, once you understand what is going on, you NEED to check all 3 of your credit reports. You are allowed to check all 3 for FREE yearly (you don't need to sign up for anything by law); just go here and follow the steps:

https://www.annualcreditreport.com/cra/index.jsp

Make sure all of the information is correct- correct anything that is not with the respective credit bureau.

Then, if you're curious and want to know the actual score (helpful to determine what interest rate bracket you'll fall in if you apply for a loan; and also as to what is exactly helping/hurting your personal score), then go here:

http://www.myfico.com/Products/FICOOne/Description.aspx

This runs $15 for the single score. But it contains a lot of helpful information. Keep in mind, the scores from the other bureaus may be slightly different.

 

holy wow batman, bumpin knows everything about everything! thanks for the great lenght in your response to this thread. i really appreciate all of your posts and i do try to follow them, not just read and toss, like some things on here! thank you!!!!