I hear of people who run up $90k on credit cards. How can they do that? Do they get 10 cards and have 9k on each one? Or 4 cards with $22k on each one? Do they get new cards when they max out one with $22k?
Yep, they open a new card at every department store who offers 10% off with purchase and a new card, etc., etc. I’m not sure how long that lasts if they can’t keep a good score and keep opening cards, but yeah, they can max out all the ones they have.
Depending on who you want to believe, the average American household [has
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Even if the mean number of credit cards is 12 or 19–both numbers seem absurdly high–the median number is probably much lower, since there are probably people who have collected hundreds of cards that push the average way off.
I’ve got one credit card and one ATM card. What else do you need? What’s the purpose of having more than one credit card?
Wait, that says “average number of bank cards per cardholding household”. Interesting choice. It doesn’t count the households that don’t have cards, and it counts by household rather than by individual, and it counts ATM cards, credit cards, and store cards. So a household where the parents each have 1 credit card, 2 store cards and two bank cards, and two older kids each have a debit card, and you’re up to 12.
It’s a stupid statistic. How about average number of credit cards per capita? Or per adult?
I have done a few 6 months same as cash before so they give you a store card for that. But I never counted that as a card since I never used it beyond the 1 purchase.
I have one credit card with $38,000 of credit on it.
It came about when all these banks started merging a few years ago.
I use my credit cards for free junk. It works as long as you pay the balance off at the end of the month. Once a year I buy something and pay it off over two months.
Citibanks sucks with fees, but I simply cancel the card, then a year later they come back with “Charge $700 and get 25,000 free miles.” Which is one free trip. I spend $700 in three months anyway, so it’s worth it.
Of course the thing is people often get into trouble when they forget or do stupid things. Like I set up one account to pay online and I put my routing number in wrong. So of course my “check bounced.” And then I lost my cheap rate, I had to pay a fee etc."
Then there is the moving due dates the credit card companies have. Or the it’s due on Sunday and you can’t make a payment on Sunday or the HSBC famous one, where FRIDAY, Saturday and Sunday aren’t business day. Come on FRIDAY isn’t a business day?
The thing is if you’re very careful you can get free stuff. Which I do. Plus you get the protection of credit cards, something doesn’t work, do a charge back.
Credit like anything can be good, bad or misued. And lets face it when you see big companies use and misuse credit it’s not hard to see how average people fall into traps.
I’ve got two of each. The debit cards are redundant, but the two credit cards I have I have one for purchases with a low 8.99% APR (crossing my fingers this doesn’t change). The other one holds a zero balance, but is one I’ve had open for eight years now. My low rate card is new and doesn’t establish as much of a credit history.
Recent related thread: Why own more than 1 credit card? - Factual Questions - Straight Dope Message Board