That’s how I feel about it too. My VISA is through L. L. Bean, and I get free shipping on their items. It’s worth it just for that. The points and cashback bonus on my Discover Card is nice too.
The shopping mall near my home has a vending machine that sells Proactiv. Yes, it takes credit cards.
I don’t know if you’re aware, but as of a few months ago, LL Bean offers free shipping for all customers, not just those who use their branded credit card. And I don’t believe there is any minimum purchase requirement.
Even among those who don’t carry a balance? I would be interested in a reference to those studies. Those variables are very difficult to control for, and I don’t know how you would establish a cause and effect relationship. There may be a correlation between the amount people spend and whether they use credit cards, but that doesn’t mean that the credit card is what causes them to spend more. Maybe people who spend more value the convenience of a credit card more. Maybe fiscally conservative people are both frugal and feel credit cards are an evil temptation.
If you max out all, make sure you can pay them off in two years. Sooner if you can dispose of those things you bought and get residual cash from them.
For me (this is an IMHO thread, right?) ‘too many’ is 1. I’ve had them in the past and usually paid them off on time, but once or twice I fell into debt on them - not too seriously, but I didn’t enjoy it.
The temptation to spend more than I can afford is best avoided (in my case) by taking away the means to do so. My hat is off to those of you that have it all under control.
I can see that. I wouldn’t very easily be able to buy online if I didn’t have a credit card, so I might not make the purchase at all. But I also have something else- self control. We don’t buy things frivolously, and we make sure we can afford our purchases. So we might not have as many “things”, but the things we do have have not put our financial situation in any kind of jeopardy.
Fiscal responsibility was not a priority when I was a young single whipper snapper but after getting married changed things for the better in a big way.
I’ve had many years since to hone my fiscal skills.
I have 2 cards - a travel rewards VISA and an AIRMILES Amex.
I maintain a high enough chequing balance that there is no annual fee charged for the VISA ($120). I use this card as a convenience card to collect the rewards and it is used for 90% of my purchases.
The Amex fee is $65 and I use the card for COSTCO purchases and AIRMILES loyalty vendors.
Of course there is no balance carried over monthly.
It’s not the number of cards you have that matters, it’s how you use them
I currently have 8, and never carry a balance on ANY of them. The points I earn by using different cards for different types of spending I reimburse for high-value airline tickets (international business class, mostly) and hotel rooms.
If you can’t keep track of all your cards now, or you’ve got a tendency to run up debt on them, close some or all of them. If not, feel free to keep them all open - but do the math to make sure you’re getting enough value off the cards to offset any annual fees you may be paying. (Frankly, I’d recommend closing several of the cards you don’t use and replacing them with Chase Sapphire Preferred and Chase Freedom if you’re interested in accumulating points for airline tickets - that is a particularly potent combination for earning Ultimate Rewards points which you can then transfer to your Southwest Frequent Flyer account.)
My understanding is that BoA doesn’t like to merge credit lines like that (unlike Chase) - but calling them up to ask certainly can’t hurt anything!
How many credit cards are too many? The correct answer is: “More than you need.” If you think you don’t need any, then one is indeed too many. Of course, ordering stuff online is going to be extremely difficult without one. Not impossible, as bank-to-bank transfers are often an option in Thailand after you’ve placed an order, but still.
I have three cards – one Thai and two American. The American ones have ridiculously high credit lines, and I keep them in case of some catastrophic occurrence such as needing a sudden heart transplant. I use them maybe twice a year in Thailand and when traveling internationally, just to keep them operating.
The wife has, I think, two. She has the main Thai card of the Thai one mine is secondary to – it’s easier for me to piggyback on hers than it is to become a main cardholder on an account here myself, much less paperwork – and I think one more connected to a local department store.
The cards cost us nothing, as we make it a rule to pay off the full balance each month. The American cards carry no annual fees, while the Thai cards’ annual fees we pay with points gained from using them throughout the year. (We’re not really up on this point system and never use the points for anything else.)
Heh, one time I had to contact my Thai credit-card company about a matter, and the person on the phone, as part of the schtick to verify my identity, asked me to tell my credit limit. That was the one question I was unprepared for. I had no idea! The person gave me a pass on that one, but it turned out to be much higher than I thought, although not nearly as high as with the American cards.
As of last July my wife and I had 40 different credit card accounts (which doesn’t include authorized cards on those accounts for each other)…so maybe 60 or so credit cards that could work. Combined I think the credit limits was something like $300K. We’re in our 40s, with an annual income in the low 100s, with a pile of savings, a mortgage and have long and good credit histories. Over the past five years we’ve applied for probably 150+ different credit cards and gotten most of them.
Why, you ask? Frequent flyer miles and hotel points. Literally millions of them which have allowed us to fly around the world in business or first class seats and stay in first class hotels, essentially for free. We pay off the amounts every month, only get cards with a waived membership fee the first year, and cancel when the membership fee hits 12 months later.
How has it hit our credit scores? Not very much to be honest. Each credit card application tends to bring down the FICO by 2-5 points in the months directly after the application BUT it can also serve to increase the FICO by making the amount of unused credit higher. There have been times when our scores have increased after applying for credit cards and right now we have a FICO that puts us in the most-trustworthy category in terms of lenders. We’ve refinanced our mortgage twice during this time and the number of credit card applications was brought up but more out of curiosity on the lenders’ side. Once I explained why we got the credit cards, it was not an issue.
Clearly, we represent an extreme case but I view credit scores as a renewable resource that allows me to indulge in a level of travel I would never be able to do otherwise. Lots of reasons why this is a bad system from a macro point of view, but for me personally it has worked out great.
To be clear, this is far too extreme for most people but then again, the “one credit card is too much” is too extreme for me. I understand the reasoning but different strokes…
For various reasons July was a peak on the totals and now we’re down to a “smaller” about 25 accounts and $170K of credit.
The answer is 2. You should have two credit cards. You need to make sure these are reporting to the big three credit rating services. Credit is not your money. Credit is a paper trail lenders use to judge how good of a risk you are. I tried to buy a house. Banks laughed at me. No credit cards means no chance of hitting that magic 720 rating. I was in the 500s because I had bills that I paid on time and those creditors report to the bureaus. Here’s what I did. I went and got a walmart card. I bought time on world of warcraft. 30 days of time for like $15. at the end of the 30 days I paid off the $15 and bought more time. You want to keep a zero or near zero balance. Every month the card makes a report to the big three. Like a little report card. When you pay on time at least the minimum then they give you an A+ or a big star who the fuck knows. Those A+ and stars add up quickly and you get numerous offers from other credit cards. Throw them the fuck away. Credit is not your money credit is your way of proving to a lender that you are a reasonable and responsible person that understands money and the importance of paying your debts. That magic 720 rating took me 18 months and 3 level 95 characters to achieve. By the time I bought my house my average score was 765. I had lenders cutting each others throats offering me fucking epic purple epic interest rates. Credit is a means to an end it’s a game that must be played if you don’t have a fat bank account and want to buy anything over time at a reasonable interest rate. Who cares if the card is 22% interest my balance is zero. Last time I checked 22% of zero isn’t scary. A magic thing happens when you hit that 720 rating. The bank manager will offer you a cup of coffee or water or something to make your stay enjoyable. World of warcraft and 2 credit cards. Oh yeah btw, the second card should be with the bank you keep your money. Use them once a month on shit you need and pay them off with a check on time every month. there sermon is over…
3 level 90’s not 95’s oops 
Those of you with multiple airline mileage/rewards cards, how can you accumulate enough spending on each card to be worthwhile? Don’t the multiple cards mean that each only earns a few points each month?
I have one card, that earns miles on the United Airlines Mileage Plus plan.
You don’t get credit cards for the paltry 1-2 miles/ spent. You get them for the signup bonuses, which are often 50k miles/points plus for 1-3k spend (so 16-50 miles/). But you have to keep signing up for new cards to do that. But there are a suprisingly huge number of cards to do so, and the only limits really are the fact that so many of the best cards are by Chase bank and American Express.
The other option is something like the Chase ink bold, which get 5 UR points/$ at Office supply stores - people put 60k/yr manufactured spend on those buying gift cards they can turn back into cash for the 300k UR points (though there are fees involved in manufactured spend).
I have one card that I use for everything. I pay for anything that will take a credit card with it and earn airmiles for purchases made on it. Over the years it’s paid for one of our flights to Europe and back, a trip to Hawaii, a few hotel rooms and when things were particularly tight and we were working on paying off debt - we turned the points into grocery store gift cards.
I have a second card that I use for purchases at my employer’s retail outlets. It’s the way our employee purchase discount works. I shop, and they apply the discount to the credit card bill.
I also have 4 additional cards that are remnants of the days in which we carried excessive credit card debt. I make occasional purchases to keep them alive and they are no annual fee cards. If he had annual fee’s I would probably have cancelled them by now since they are providing me no actual value but at this point there is no real reason to.
I also discovered recently that I have a couple lines of credit still available to me. I thought they’d been closed when we paid them off but apparently they’re just hanging around waiting for me to go crazy They showed up during our mortgage application process.
Thanks, I’m fine.
You should use paragraphs.
I think 3 is about the right number. My primary is a credit/debit card which comes right out of my bank account. Then I have a Visa and a Discover that I can use for unexpected expenses and/or for large purchases that I don’t expect and may not have enough in my checking account to cover, especially while traveling. And traveling can often activate the fraud protection on a card and disable it until you call them, so it’s good to have at least one backup card.
The 1 mile-per-dollar-spent isn’t bad if you pump a lot of money through the card. I buy damn near everything with it, maybe $35K/year.
As far as the signing bonuses go, my wife and I each got separate Amex cards, so we each got our own signing bonuses. Then things got interesting:
-after a few months, I wanted to cancel my card and get a second card on my wife’s account, so I could inflate her FF mileage account for a while. I called to cancel my own card, and Amex offered me something like 30K miles to not cancel that day. So I held off a week, got the miles, then cancelled the card anyway and took out a second card on my wife’s account as originally planned.
-After a year of dumping my miles into my wife’s FF account, I called up AmEx and applied for my own card again. Because it had been a full year, I was eligible for another signing bonus, again something like 25K miles. Sweet deal.
So in the space of about 2.5 years, each of us has accumulated enough miles for a free round trip ticket to Japan.