how many...

[Judique]

Interesting...so you don't have to answer if you don't want, but for those with five plus cards open, what is your total amount of credit available? I used to be a loan officer at a bank and we were taught that several open lines of credit (even ones that hadn't been used in years) were a huge red flag because of opportunity risk....say I approved you for a personal loan when you had 25,000 available in credit lines. Even if you never put a dime on them, it was a huge risk because you had the opportunity to go out tomorrow and become massively in debt. We only in the past couple of years started taking advantage of bonus deals and I have always closed the card when we were done (particularly to avoid the annual fee) for this reason. We have never been turned down, but we currently have two cards (Disney and chase preferred) that we have had less than a year. I was tempted at the airport to sign up for the southwest visa, but since we already had two cards I didn't want to get greedy. We have excellent credit, pay off in full every month, but it just seemed like a lot. I was curious where everyone else stood on it.

I've got more than 5 cards, not counting store cards - I have very few store cards - Macy's,etc which I like to have for the store discounts - charge than switch the charge to Visa or something..

On my older cards, the available credit is in the 6 figure range total, without getting too specific.

Never been turned down and never closed a card but have had an account or two closed because of inactivity - all store cards.

I do have a high income also, so that may figure into the approvals as well as a high credit score. I've opened 4 Chase cards in the last 2-3 years - both Disney, Southwest, and IHG Mastercard primarily to get the promo bonuses. The IHG MC is another what I call a self supporting card -$49 annual fee and a free night on your card anniversary/offsets the annual fee and then some.

I wouldn't hesitate on the Southwest Visa if you fly Southwest and I would do the Premier card at $99 annual fee, as you not only can get the 50K bonus, but you get 6k points per year which offsets the cost of the annual fee, making it more like $10 a year or so. I value a 1 way flight from Maryland to Orlando at around $75 to $100 and we've been able to get those flights in the 4500 to 6500 point range fairly consistently. This may not work for all, but even though I rarely use the actual SW Visa, at this point it is self supporting for me.

The only card I really feel I need to close is the Chase Disney with the fee as the rewards aren't much and I still have the free one for the other perks at Disney.

 

[havaneselover]

Interesting...so you don't have to answer if you don't want, but for those with five plus cards open, what is your total amount of credit available? I used to be a loan officer at a bank and we were taught that several open lines of credit (even ones that hadn't been used in years) were a huge red flag because of opportunity risk....say I approved you for a personal loan when you had 25,000 available in credit lines. Even if you never put a dime on them, it was a huge risk because you had the opportunity to go out tomorrow and become massively in debt. We only in the past couple of years started taking advantage of bonus deals and I have always closed the card when we were done (particularly to avoid the annual fee) for this reason. We have never been turned down, but we currently have two cards (Disney and chase preferred) that we have had less than a year. I was tempted at the airport to sign up for the southwest visa, but since we already had two cards I didn't want to get greedy. We have excellent credit, pay off in full every month, but it just seemed like a lot. I was curious where everyone else stood on it.

More than I make in a year. Credit score is > 800. There's rarely more than $2000 on all of mine combined though and I don't ever carry a balance.

 

[bigbabyblues]

Two. A Visa (12-13 years) that we mostly use when traveling or booking trips, and one (Visa, I think) that we got as a 12-month 0% interest this time last year when our furnace diedin the dead of winter (now paid off). I canceled all the store cards a few years ago because we pay cash for those purchases now anyway.

 

[hsmamato2]

@moesy4 see, I learned about having multiple cards within the last 5-6 years.... and was taught the exact opposite.... having credit=better credit rating=stellar credit score=excellent loan options..... so far that's exactly our situation. Our line(s) of credit are so ridiculously high,and we never come near to touching them.... If we did do that, we wouldn't be able to pay our bills.... ***and another point.... if you have older credit cards,and they don't cost you anything to keep, KEEP THEM OPEN. The older your (good) credit history,the better.***
I hesitate to spill on a public forum all my details, but similiar to what other pp's have posted, I like my cards for reward options- sometimes that's an open-a-card-bonus, many times it's a 'keeper' in my wallet that earns great rewards. (I fixate on travel rewards,b/c travel is too expensive for our regular budget, but with the rewards cards we travel,a lot)
That's no secret,and I like sharing that publicly

 

[hsmamato2]

Also...FWIW, to those who have 'sock drawer' credit cards.... keep them open, but DON'T just forget about them... keep good records-keep careful track of what you have open, and keep an eye on those online statements. Otherwise if your card # is compromised you may not know till too late to repair it. A good rule of them is checking online at least monthly to keep tabs on ALL your cards for safety.

 

[rnorwo1]

Also...FWIW, to those who have 'sock drawer' credit cards.... keep them open, but DON'T just forget about them... keep good records-keep careful track of what you have open, and keep an eye on those online statements. Otherwise if your card # is compromised you may not know till too late to repair it. A good rule of them is checking online at least monthly to keep tabs on ALL your cards for safety.

Excellent point. DH is the primary and I was an authorized user on one card we have, and I never even touched my card... I didn't even have an online profile. We got a call from the cc company suspecting fraud. I confirmed that the one charge they suspected was indeed fraud; however, someone had actually been using the card for 2-3 months, so there were a lot of charges and no bills being paid! We had it all erased and canceled the card, but that could have been very messy.

I have done a lot of cc churning in the last couple of years. We have taken 7-8 trips all over the country practically for free. Like PP, I cancel cards that don't justify the fees, and I keep the ones that are self-supporting or have no fee. we would have never had so many wonderful trips without it, but I'm going to give it a rest the next year. It can be kind of tiring!

 

[ronandannette]

I have a fistful. Maybe two fists full if you count my husband's cards as well. It's been a very long time since I canceled a card. Years.

{{sigh}} I'm terrible for this too. We've got 6 separate accounts between DH and I - most of which have been open for 20 years or more - long before there were any "perks" offered. I have thought many times we should sort them out and go with only one; something we could purposefully use to accumulate miles, or points or something. But end of the day it's too much of a pain to cancel and re-direct all the direct-pays we've established on them (regular charity donations, subscriptions, Netflix and whatnot).

One.

No churning for points/rewards. It can be done, but I do think it's harder/less effective in Canada.

We definitely don't have access to some of the more enticing ones American DIS'ers talk about but many people I know have made out pretty nicely by skillfully utilizing their RBC World Mastercards or Avion Visas. From what I understand, "churning" is not actually as beneficial as just finding a particularly good one and being prolific in its use.

 

[xlxo]

I started with Visa.... then had to get Amex for Costco. Then had to get MasterCard when some retailers only accepted that.

After 2 cards... be aware it can LOWER your credit rating. Having a second card was handy in San Fran's BART where they only allow two credit card rides before they lock you out.

After more than 2 cards, I found it hard remembering to when to pay the other cards.

 

[havaneselover]

I started with Visa.... then had to get Amex for Costco. Then had to get MasterCard when some retailers only accepted that.

After 2 cards... be aware it can LOWER your credit rating. Having a second card was handy in San Fran's BART where they only allow two credit card rides before they lock you out.

After more than 2 cards, I found it hard remembering to when to pay the other cards.

Lots of us have way more than 2 cards with very high credit scores. I wouldn't open more if I wanted to get a car loan or apply for a mortgage this year, but really it's not a huge deal.

As far as keeping track of when to pay what, I know I pay four with my first paycheck of the month and two with the second. I've never missed a payment.

 

[calypso726]

Interesting...so you don't have to answer if you don't want, but for those with five plus cards open, what is your total amount of credit available? I used to be a loan officer at a bank and we were taught that several open lines of credit (even ones that hadn't been used in years) were a huge red flag because of opportunity risk....say I approved you for a personal loan when you had 25,000 available in credit lines. Even if you never put a dime on them, it was a huge risk because you had the opportunity to go out tomorrow and become massively in debt. We only in the past couple of years started taking advantage of bonus deals and I have always closed the card when we were done (particularly to avoid the annual fee) for this reason. We have never been turned down, but we currently have two cards (Disney and chase preferred) that we have had less than a year. I was tempted at the airport to sign up for the southwest visa, but since we already had two cards I didn't want to get greedy. We have excellent credit, pay off in full every month, but it just seemed like a lot. I was curious where everyone else stood on it.

Well over $200K in available credit just on my accounts, DH has more and we both have credit scores over 800. When we started travel hacking and opening up credit cards for bonuses etc. our scores were in the low 700's. We pay balances in full each month. With such a large amount of open credit our overall utilization ratio is very low which helps us to have a higher credit score. We don't cancel old cards in order to keep our average age of credit history good since that also plays into the credit score. We don't churn cards to the extent that the bloggers and serious travel hackers do and are not opening up 3-6 cards every 3 months. That's our yearly average. Applications with hard pulls will ding your credit score a couple of points but that information drops off in a year. The new card gives you a larger amount of open credit and thus lowers your overall utilization which raises the credit score. The mortgage is paid off so I wouldn't worry right now about a loan but that is good information to know. We haven't had a problem qualifying for car loans at 0% interest when it was offered but we also tend to keep a car until it dies so we've got a good number of years to see if that will hold true for us since Toyotas live quite a long time

I posted this on another thread but I will post it here for relevance on credit card bonuses for travel. Before travel hacking we only flew maybe once a year. Now we don't let the idea of airfare stand in our way of planning vacations since we know we will have miles to use. Our first year travel hacking we amounted 700,00+ points and miles. We've managed to maintain at least 2 million points and miles between us so we always have a stash. The bloggers we follow and learn the most from are The Points Guy, Million Mile Secrets, Frequent Miler, Mommy Points and View From the Wing. We keep a handful of annual fee cards because the benefits outweigh the fee. Some we keep because the earning potential for points is too good to pass up, like the Chase Ink Plus business card. MMS blogger has a tutorial of how anyone can apply for a business card. You get 5 ultimate reward points per $ on cable, internet, phone and office supply stores. Well, office supply stores sell gift cards. So, we buy gift cards for Disney, Whole Foods, Macy's etc. at Staples for 5 points per dollar and then use the gift card to purchase what we need at the store. The point earning potential is worth the fee for us. The exception to that is when Raise has discounted gift cards for the same places where the discount is worth more than the 5 points per dollar. We wind up with 5 miles per dollar on our Disney cruises, Adventures by Disney trips, annual passes and DVC dues by purchasing Disney gift cards at office supply stores, then transferring on to the Disney Vacation Savings account and paying through that to get the extra $20 per $1000 we are spending anyhow. SO we flip flop sometimes on whether we want to save cash or earn miles.

 

[tvguy]

@moesy4 see, I learned about having multiple cards within the last 5-6 years.... and was taught the exact opposite.... having credit=better credit rating=stellar credit score=excellent loan options..... so far that's exactly our situation. Our line(s) of credit are so ridiculously high,and we never come near to touching them.... If we did do that, we wouldn't be able to pay our bills.... ***and another point.... if you have older credit cards,and they don't cost you anything to keep, KEEP THEM OPEN. The older your (good) credit history,the better.***
I hesitate to spill on a public forum all my details, but similiar to what other pp's have posted, I like my cards for reward options- sometimes that's an open-a-card-bonus, many times it's a 'keeper' in my wallet that earns great rewards. (I fixate on travel rewards,b/c travel is too expensive for our regular budget, but with the rewards cards we travel,a lot)
That's no secret,and I like sharing that publicly

This is exactly what I was told by several reliable sources when I closed my second VISA card and went to just 1 credit card. My kids were about to start college and I wanted THAT dollar amount available if I needed it for Parent-student loans. Shortly after that I did get a car loan, and they did the traditional credit check while we were out test driving. Credit manager came back and just looked at the salesman and us and said, "they're pre-approved by their bank for amount greater than the sticker price of any vehicle we have on the lot, at a rate lower than I can offer. Find the car they want, negotiate the price, and we'll have them out of here in 30 minutes". But it was a Ford dealer, not Mercedes or something expensive.

 

[tvguy]

. Then had to get MasterCard when some retailers only accepted that.
.

That's interesting. I'm old enough to remember before MasterCard (or Master Charge as it was first called) went into business. I remember a lot of stores that took VISA (aka BANK AMERICARD) but not Master Card, but never saw one that took Master Card and not VISA.
I know when Sears started Discover Card, DW went into Sears to buy hundreds of dollars of clothing for our honeymoon only to find out Sears was only taking Discover. That didn't last long. And of course American Express, Diners Club, Carte Blanche have always had fewer merchants accept them.

 

[Jaime4004]

Interesting...so you don't have to answer if you don't want, but for those with five plus cards open, what is your total amount of credit available? I used to be a loan officer at a bank and we were taught that several open lines of credit (even ones that hadn't been used in years) were a huge red flag because of opportunity risk....say I approved you for a personal loan when you had 25,000 available in credit lines. Even if you never put a dime on them, it was a huge risk because you had the opportunity to go out tomorrow and become massively in debt. We only in the past couple of years started taking advantage of bonus deals and I have always closed the card when we were done (particularly to avoid the annual fee) for this reason. We have never been turned down, but we currently have two cards (Disney and chase preferred) that we have had less than a year. I was tempted at the airport to sign up for the southwest visa, but since we already had two cards I didn't want to get greedy. We have excellent credit, pay off in full every month, but it just seemed like a lot. I was curious where everyone else stood on it.

I don't know the total amount of credit DH and I have available but I know that 2 of the cards have a $25000 limit each, no idea about the others. It has not impacted us negatively. Bought two cars in the last 2 yrs, credit scores are >800 each. I don't plan on getting a new mortgage in many years (we are 40 and I plan to stay in this house til retirement).

We have several cards, use whichever I need the rewards on most at that time.
We both have a regular disney visa (opened a few yrs ago to get the $200 gift cards on each) but i'm going to close both of these after we use up the rewards cards that we have.
Mostly use Premier Disney VISA. Most people don't like it but it's been good to me. Got a $200 credit for opening it, which is 4 yrs of annual fees to me. Cashed out about $400 in rewards so far this year.
Also use Amazon for amazon points, use this more in the last half of the year to save up for christmas.
Have SW, saved up enough for 5 tickets which we used last november, but it took several years. We don't use it much anymore but I might start back again.
And recently opened up a royal caribbean for the $100 on board credit because we have a cruise booked through them. I had this years ago and did get several hundred dollars in on board credit. Not sure how long i'll keep this open, we'll see if we end up using it.

I'm not a sock drawer credit card storer, they get canceled when no longer useful to me. If there's a minimal impact on our credit score, it's not enough to make a difference.

I am considering opening a sams club mastercard because they do not take visa and every card we have is a visa. That is the only place I use a debit card, and i'd rather not...

 

[rockawaybeachgirl]

Well over $200K in available credit just on my accounts, DH has more and we both have credit scores over 800. When we started travel hacking and opening up credit cards for bonuses etc. our scores were in the low 700's. We pay balances in full each month. With such a large amount of open credit our overall utilization ratio is very low which helps us to have a higher credit score. We don't cancel old cards in order to keep our average age of credit history good since that also plays into the credit score. We don't churn cards to the extent that the bloggers and serious travel hackers do and are not opening up 3-6 cards every 3 months. That's our yearly average. Applications with hard pulls will ding your credit score a couple of points but that information drops off in a year. The new card gives you a larger amount of open credit and thus lowers your overall utilization which raises the credit score. The mortgage is paid off so I wouldn't worry right now about a loan but that is good information to know. We haven't had a problem qualifying for car loans at 0% interest when it was offered but we also tend to keep a car until it dies so we've got a good number of years to see if that will hold true for us since Toyotas live quite a long time

I posted this on another thread but I will post it here for relevance on credit card bonuses for travel. Before travel hacking we only flew maybe once a year. Now we don't let the idea of airfare stand in our way of planning vacations since we know we will have miles to use. Our first year travel hacking we amounted 700,00+ points and miles. We've managed to maintain at least 2 million points and miles between us so we always have a stash. The bloggers we follow and learn the most from are The Points Guy, Million Mile Secrets, Frequent Miler, Mommy Points and View From the Wing. We keep a handful of annual fee cards because the benefits outweigh the fee. Some we keep because the earning potential for points is too good to pass up, like the Chase Ink Plus business card. MMS blogger has a tutorial of how anyone can apply for a business card. You get 5 ultimate reward points per $ on cable, internet, phone and office supply stores. Well, office supply stores sell gift cards. So, we buy gift cards for Disney, Whole Foods, Macy's etc. at Staples for 5 points per dollar and then use the gift card to purchase what we need at the store. The point earning potential is worth the fee for us. The exception to that is when Raise has discounted gift cards for the same places where the discount is worth more than the 5 points per dollar. We wind up with 5 miles per dollar on our Disney cruises, Adventures by Disney trips, annual passes and DVC dues by purchasing Disney gift cards at office supply stores, then transferring on to the Disney Vacation Savings account and paying through that to get the extra $20 per $1000 we are spending anyhow. SO we flip flop sometimes on whether we want to save cash or earn miles.

I could have written this post (except our mortgage is not paid off). On one card alone I have a $50k limit. As a data point, we just refinanced our mortgage to a 7/1 ARM @ 3.5% and had no issues getting approved. Both credit scores over 800.

I'd add Flyertalk as a valuable points and miles resource. I'm a frequent traveller but I admit, I've learned so much from those sites. I actually just used BA Avios to book my husband round trip NYC-Toronto for 9000 miles for the Hockey World Cup next September and got refunded $1400 for tickets from Cancun to NYC based on tips I've learned on those sites.

 

[calypso726]

I could have written this post (except our mortgage is not paid off). On one card alone I have a $50k limit. As a data point, we just refinanced our mortgage to a 7/1 ARM @ 3.5% and had no issues getting approved. Both credit scores over 800.

I'd add Flyertalk as a valuable points and miles resource. I'm a frequent traveller but I admit, I've learned so much from those sites. I actually just used BA Avios to book my husband round trip NYC-Toronto for 9000 miles for the Hockey World Cup next September and got refunded $1400 for tickets from Cancun to NYC based on tips I've learned on those sites.

Hello fellow travel hacker! DH just picked up the BA card recently for the second time to try and get another 100,000 Avios. Even with the devaluation on their mileage program, short haul domestic flights will still cost less points than other airline programs. Plus, we are shooting for the companion pass this time even though manufactured spending has become more difficult. I miss my Redbird account. I still have a live Bluebird and hopefully it will stay that way while we try to hit he $30,000 required for the companion pass this year! I have learned quite a bit on Flyertalk too but I will warn anyone that they are not as friendly as the people on the DIS. I very rarely post there and just read and learn what I can on the threads. There, you are expected to do your homework read before asking, especially on manufactured spending topics. They do have specific newbie areas and threads too though.

 

[AnnaS]

Only one credit card. We pay it off each month. No need for another one but since our cc has been compromised more than once over the years, we really need to get another one. We had two for years (both with Chase), but they closed since we had not used it in two years. I do have multiple store cards.

 

[xlxo]

I remember a lot of stores that took VISA (aka BANK AMERICARD) but not Master Card, but never saw one that took Master Card and not VISA.

In the old days... Visa charged card holders an annual fee and other no-fee cards had higher merchant fees. Visa was the champion. Today all credit cards have fee, no-fee, and rebate options. To get lower merchant fees today, credit cards demanded exclusivity.

http://globalnews.ca/news/1571433/costco-canada-dumping-american-express-for-mastercard/

 

[tvguy]

In the old days... Visa charged card holders an annual fee and other no-fee cards had higher merchant fees. Visa was the champion. Today all credit cards have fee, no-fee, and rebate options. To get lower merchant fees today, credit cards demanded exclusivity.

http://globalnews.ca/news/1571433/costco-canada-dumping-american-express-for-mastercard/

Smaller merchants here have rebelled a little. Cash only signs are getting more common. It's funny, because at work we just put in vending machines that take credit and debit, so our under 30's can get a burrito at work, but if they have to take their lunch break in some small town at Grandma's Diner, Granny wants the green stuff.

 

[TheDisneyDoll]

i think i've got 5.

One is only for emergencies so there are never charges on that, one is for buying plane tickets, one is for pretty much everything else. The other two are store cards and also never really get used

 

[rockawaybeachgirl]

Hello fellow travel hacker! DH just picked up the BA card recently for the second time to try and get another 100,000 Avios. Even with the devaluation on their mileage program, short haul domestic flights will still cost less points than other airline programs. Plus, we are shooting for the companion pass this time even though manufactured spending has become more difficult. I miss my Redbird account. I still have a live Bluebird and hopefully it will stay that way while we try to hit he $30,000 required for the companion pass this year! I have learned quite a bit on Flyertalk too but I will warn anyone that they are not as friendly as the people on the DIS. I very rarely post there and just read and learn what I can on the threads. There, you are expected to do your homework read before asking, especially on manufactured spending topics. They do have specific newbie areas and threads too though.

Hello! I literally just booked one last pre-devaluation flight with Avios. My husband and I both got the card when they were offering 100k miles each a few years back and man have we gotten our money's worth! My husband is in Nashville now at the NHL all star game and while he's paying OOP for the hotel, he's getting breakfast and lounge access tonight free due to his Gold status with Marriott courtesy of the Ritz Carlton credit card!

I used the Companion pass last August to take my daughter (12) to London and Scotland (the add on to Edinburgh was 'free' because of the routing rules). As you know, you still have to pay the ridic BA fees bc the flights have to be on BA metal; that being said, we flew business class there (upper deck, great experience) and in first on the way back (Concorde room and all that) for 100k miles and less than $1800 in taxes. We used Marriott points for 5 nights at the County Hall Marriott (unbelievable location) and Hilton points for the hotel in Edinburgh, so I think I did pretty well all things considered! Love travelling for pennies on the dollar!