Way ta go: Everybody should be giving the crooks more of their business so we can cry more about it when they put the screws to folks. Don't u though~?
I have 5 Major Credit Cards - all Platinum Juniper $17,500 CL Bal $0 CitiBank Select $10,900 Bal $0 CitiBank AAWorld $15,000 Bal $0 ATT Universal $15,000 Bal $0 FirstUSA $12,000 Bal $6000 @ 4.99 til paid (just used a x-fer this week til I can get another 0% offer) Two retail cards which I almost never use Strawbridges $500 Bal $0 Kohl's $300 Bal $0 In June of last year I just had FirstUSA $12,000 Peoples $4,000 Peoples decided not to renew my card in January (with a 747 EQ FICO!!!) so it's closed now. I had expected to have all $0 balances by now but had a few wrenches thrown into my plan but am on track again to be credit card debt free by late fall. EQ 731 EX 705 TU 758
When is it a "liability" I see lots of members with LOT$ of accumulated credit...Great Job! However, I could have sworn I read a post a few months ago about the optimal number of credit cards, loans, retail cards, etc... that would optimize your score... or...is this a "myth." I have the following...and worried that any more would hurt my score... Cap1 Gold - $1500 Cap1 Kmart Gold - $4500 My Credit Union Visa Gold - $5000 My Credit Union Line of Credit - $2500 Target Guest Card - $400 PayPal Visa - $1500 my current scores listed below...
Thanks Marci, Last June I was pretty maxed out and my EQ was only 621 at one point, primarily because of utilization ratios. After buying my new house I stupidly listened to the mortgage broker and had closed a slew of credit lines. What a fool - it tanked my ratios and thus my score. Certainly I was in pretty deep, but their advice only caused me to have problems with Peoples trying to jack my rate from 13.99% to 27.99% because of the tanked score and ratios. That was actually a blessing because if that hadn't have happened to me I wouldn't have found CreditNet and I probably would have continued to ignore my debt - most of which my hubby didn't know I had. Now I can come clean - LOL. In addition to about 14,500 in cc debt at the time (last June) I had a LOC I owed 2700 on. In 10 months I've paid off abt. $11,000 - feels good!
Re: When is it a "liability" Ted, No need to worry about having too much with what you've listed. You have... 4 Major CC's 1 Retail CC 1 LOC and you only have $15,400 of CL. What is the total of your balances? That's a key component. If you owe more than 25% of the total Credit available your scores will be lower. Get more credit (or pay down debt) and your scores go higher. I do think too many cards can eventually hurt the score but it seems the biggest jumps in scores I've gotten have been when I added additional available credit. Many here can attest to the same thing. If I were you, my plan would be to try to get some prime cards with big CL's - let them age to 1 year and then close a couple of the ones which have small CL's and won't give you increases. When deciding which ones to close it's a good rule of thumb to keep your oldest cc account open. Of course, it's always a good idea to also have a debt reduction plan. Quicken is terrific for helping you budget, track expenses, and put a plan together which you can then follow.
repky to lbrown --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Way ta go: Everybody should be giving the crooks more of their business so we can cry more about it when they put the screws to folks." --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- While i did admit to the addictive nature of apply for ccs online, and while i'm aware of the downfalls of having too many cards - there is an upside, in my opinion. if someone does try to "screw u over" with higher interest rates, etc - at least you have other cards that you can transfer balances to.
score effect I'm waiting to see how the negative and positive factors will affect scores Negative: two new accounts on the report (when they post) and the hard inquires Positive - better debt cl ratio when cards post i wonder which has more of an effect on the score
Re: reply to lbrown just out of curiousity lb - how many cards do you have? hope you don't mind me asking
Re: reply to lbrown About 8 total. I use one for my ISP.I don't use it for anything else and I never carry a balance on it. I have another one I use the same way for my cell phone and another card is handled the same way for long distance phone service. ================================ My idea is to use cards for convenience not to make the banks rich.
