Plan to lighten sock drawer?

Anonymous · ‎11-20-2015

Good morning lovely myFICO-ites,

The past two years have been very productive for me in app spree-ing and rebuilding/building my credit profile, but I have seen the light and realized I don't really feel like managing as many cards as I have and figuing out which ones I need to pull out of the SD to keep active. Some of the store cards/potato-tier cards need to go! I've got my list below, if anyone can make a compelling argument to trim other cards/keep ones I'm considering trimming, I'd love your opinions.

American Express BCE - KEEP - 10.5k limit, 0% through next June and will have my second 3x CLI approaching in January. Great little card, and once it hits the year mark I will PC tp BCP for the higher grocery %.

Amazon Store Card - keep? close? - 6k limit. While there's lots of wiggle room on this card, and I've had it for 2 years, the 5% has always been offered via my Chase Freedom or Discover (10% here currently) at any given time. Just doesn't feel like a high priority to keep, but the high CL is nice for overall UTIL padding. Leaning towards just keeping it in the sock drawer.

Best Buy Visa (Citi) - keep? close? - 2k limit. I got this in the summer because I wanted a card that gave rewards for fast food restaurants, and because I had some spend at Best Buy, but after the holidays this is going to go to pretty much zero use. Sock drawer it?

Capital One Venture - KEEEEEP - 15k limit. No brainer. Flexible travel reimbursement/spending, great UTIL padding.

Chase Freedom - KEEP - 5k limit. between this and Discover the rotating categories cover most of my spend. Eventual goal is to get a CSP (not any time soon), so having the relationship here seems like a good idea to me.

Credit One - CLOSE - 1k limit. I KNOW, I KNOW - I should have closed this last year before the year mark, once I had the Amex and Discover, or pretty much any time I opened a prime card... But I figured I'd keep it open for 2 years so I had no other AF cards and it could help pad my AAoA.

DCU - KEEP - 7.5k limit, low APR, no fee BTs and I am building a relationship with them via my car loan and this. No brainer here.

Discover - KEEP - 1.3k limit. I like the relationship with Discover, works weell in tandem with the Freedom for covering spend, and this card started at a $500 limit last March and has grown a few hundred at a time. I'm cleaning up the last of a couple baddies, once they are gone I am hoping to see the same CL growth as most of the forums.

Dressbarn - CLOSE - 800 limit. Opened this summer for a coupon, and haven't shopped there since. None of my Comenity cards have been real CLI movers, nor do I care to have 20k available credit in store cards. Easy decision.

Express - CLOSE - 1.5k. This card is 2 years old. I got it because I actually do shop there and I needed something other than the Credit One to rebuild. It's given me a substantial number of coupons, but a girl can only have so many Portofino shirts. It's not a huge CL, I haven't used it with any regularity in the past 6 months, and I'm 90% positive in counts under clother/department stores cashback on the category spend cards.

Kohls - LOL - 300 limit. Opened 2 months ago because I knew they give a ton of coupons year round, but I can't even put 50% of my Christmas shopping on this stupid card. Tempted to close, tempted to sock drawer. The coupons will be nice for Christmas, and I'm actually moving around the block from a Kohls in the new year, so maybe this will see more use? If I do close it, it may be one I do last.

Lowes - KEEP - 12k limit. Opened the same time as the Kohls card, since their CL couldn't cover the purchase I was looking to make. Moving in two months and home decor/curtains/hardware will get this little guy some activity. Worthwhile keeping in the sock drawer for the UTIL padding.

Sallie Mae - keep? close? 5k limit. I like this card, gas and grocery are nice, but not sure if I need to keep it,especially once Amex BCE becomes a BCP. 5k UTIL padding is no joke, and their customer service is lovely. When the 0% APR ends I may see if I can get a reduction/SP CLI. If I'm not lucky there, this might head to the chopping block.

Victoria's Secret - keep? close? - 2.5k limit. I actually do use this card a lot, and they send me rewards coupons like crazy. Leaning heavily towards keep - my only gripe is no reporting on months it doesn't get use.

Anyone know many are safe to close in a single timespan? I was hedging on 2 cards every couple of months until the profile is trimmer, tentatively in this order:

Now: Credit One, Dressbarn

February: Amazon Store Card, Kohl's

June: Express, Best Buy

AAoA decrease not a concern - I have a large number of student loans reporting. At 4 years AAoA even with all the cards I've added in the past year. Everything listed as keep I intend to hold onto for AT LEAST the next 2-3 years with no new apps - aiming to buy a house/get mortgage in that timeframe.

Any advice is greatly appreciated!!!

deltatee · ‎11-20-2015

If it was me, I'd definitely keep Sallie. Depending on how much you shop for groceries and gas, and where you do your shopping, SM might be more beneficial than BCP after the fee. I also would keep Kohls. That is the only store card I have, and I keep it around for the steep discounts. Also, I would probably keep Amazon as a backup for Amazon purchases. Since you already took he HP and the AAOA hit to get these cards, I would take my time closing those three. Let us know what you decide!

Edit: typo

barthooper · ‎11-20-2015

@deltatee wrote:
If it was me, I'd definitely keep Sallie. Depending on how much you shop for groceries and gas, and where you do your shopping, SM might be more beneficial than BCP after the fee. I also would keep Kohls. That is the only store card I have, and I keep it around for the steep discounts. Also, I would probably keep Amazon as a backup for Amazon purchases. Since you already took he HP and the AAOA hit to get these cards, I would take my time closing those three. Let us know what you decide!

Edit: typo

Definitely keep this in mind/look into this. SM generally counts Walmarts (usually the supercenters) as grocery stores and some Target stores qualify as well, whereas this isn't the case for the BCE/BCP.

takeshi74 · ‎11-20-2015

@Anonymous wrote:
Anyone know many are safe to close in a single timespan?

There's no fixed number/timespan that applies to all. The best info available is in the Closing Credit Cards thread linked in the Helpful Threads sticky.

@Anonymous wrote:
AAoA decrease not a concern

As the Closing Credit Cards threads states, AAoA is not immediately impacted anyway.

@Anonymous wrote:
Any advice is greatly appreciated!!!

You have to determine what to close and what to keep using the knowledge available on impact to credit and, more importantly, based on your specific needs/wants. You can't just poll others to determine this. You should be using your needs/wants to select new cards to begin with. If a card no longer meets your need/wants then consider closing it. You've covered some of this with some of your cards but why did you select the card in the first place? Is the card still serving that purpose? If not, is is it fulfilling another purpose? You have to make the call on these things. These are not one-size-fits-all matters.

@Anonymous wrote:
Amazon Store Card - keep? close? - 6k limit. While there's lots of wiggle room on this card, and I've had it for 2 years, the 5% has always been offered via my Chase Freedom or Discover (10% here currently) at any given time

Freedom and Discover it rotate categories every quarter. Amazon is not 5% year round on those cards. If you shop enough at Amazon then you may want a card with 5% year round.

@Anonymous wrote:
Just doesn't feel like a high priority to keep, but the high CL is nice for overall UTIL padding.

Utilization padding can certainly be a reason if you want it to be but do the math to determine how much a card is actually impacting your revolving utilization. Don't just assume that keeping every possible dollar makes a signficant difference.

@Anonymous wrote:
Discover - KEEP - 1.3k limit. I like the relationship with Discover

@Anonymous wrote:
DCU - KEEP - 7.5k limit, low APR, no fee BTs and I am building a relationship with them via my car loan and this. No brainer here.

@Anonymous wrote:
Chase Freedom - KEEP - 5k limit. between this and Discover the rotating categories cover most of my spend. Eventual goal is to get a CSP (not any time soon), so having the relationship here seems like a good idea to me.

Don't rely on "relationship". Relationship may help a bit in some cases but either you qualify or you don't. Primary factors will always be credit and income. Relationship will not make or break an approval, CLI, APR reduction, etc on its own or override those primary factors.

Make sure you're carefully considering whether or not the CSP actually fits your spend and the redemption methods you can leverage. As with any rewards program, run the numbers for your spend. Redemption can greatly impact point value so always do your due diligence with such rewards programs.

@Anonymous wrote:
Credit One - CLOSE - 1k limit. I KNOW, I KNOW - I should have closed this last year before the year mark, once I had the Amex and Discover, or pretty much any time I opened a prime card... But I figured I'd keep it open for 2 years so I had no other AF cards and it could help pad my AAoA.

No AF cards and AAoA padding don't matter. As indicated by the Closing Credit Cards thread, closed accounts on your reports continue to factor into your AAoA.

@Anonymous wrote:
Sallie Mae - keep? close? 5k limit. I like this card, gas and grocery are nice, but not sure if I need to keep it,especially once Amex BCE becomes a BCP. 5k UTIL padding is no joke

Again, run the numbers -- for both rewards on your spend and for impact to revolving utilization. If you're not running the numbers when applying and when deciding to close it's not a surprise that you have difficulty assessing these things. Determine the impact and see if the impact is significant to you.

Anonymous · ‎11-20-2015

Keep Sallie Mae & VS, close Amazon and Best Buy

Never really worth it to close a card you're using actively imo.

What is your uti? Seems like you have a lot of cards for "uti padding"

Anonymous · ‎11-20-2015

Thanks for the advice guys, I appreciate it!

I'll work the numbers on the Sallie Mae - added bonus is that I forgot that my local Target counts as grocery, so that should be factored in too. I will keep the VS since there's still a lot of spend there. Amazon purchases only happen at select times of year with a bulk of it being around the holidays, and at least for this year I'm getting better returns from the category cards. The Kohls discounts are unbelievably useful, so I suppose it wouldn't kill me to hang onto this one. I'll keep Best Buy through the holidays and then it's gone.

My util is 4% overall. I have 0% APR on the Amex and the Chase cards that I used for a couple big ticket items, will be paid off well before the promotional period expires. Everything else is reporting 0 balance. I like the idea of keeping the higher CLs in the event there's ever a situation where I want to use a decent chunk of credit and/or carry a balance on bigger purchases. For my own piece of mind, I never want my total util to be greater than 10%. I have the habit, for better or worse, of micro-managing my daily finances

My biggest reason for wanting to cut the ties on some of these cards is because enough of them don't see use/don't report and I don't need 3 or 4 different cards that I have to buy a cup of coffee every few months or so. Unfortunately that's what some of the smaller cards have become - or worse yet - these store cards that aren't even reporting because I'm just not spending there.

Again, thank you all for the insight!

klarso11 · ‎11-22-2015

I used every card I could get to raise scores nearly 200 points in 2 years time. Now...I've recently closed 2 accounts, consolidated 2 Capital One's into 1 account and am about to close anything left that doesn't give rewards of some kind. That would drop me from 11 open cards to 5 but with more CL than I had 6 months ago, thanks to AMEX and Barclay...and the excellent advice I've received from all of you!

CreditUnionFan · ‎11-22-2015

The only card I'd feel a NEED to close would be ones with annual fees, or the Credit One.

Comenity cards will grow - every few months click the CLI button. If you get a letter instead of a CLI, you try again next month. While it's nice to have monthly reporting, the other cards are doing that. I keep the Comenity store cards around just for the coupons. (Peebles, Express, J.Crew, Eddie Bauer, HSN, Bealls Florida)

Kohls is currently issued by Capital One, and they seem to be a bit tight, but with usage that card will grow as well.

The Amazon card probably isn't hurting anything to have for the larger purchases that qualify for the promotional financing. I'm on the fence with Best Buy though because if you have a low limit, you'll have to specifically request a CLI via a HP. I still keep my BBY account even with its pathetic $805 CL, a stark contrast to the Hilton and AA cards from Citi I was approved for this year.

The Sallie Mae card isn't offered, so while you have the 5% categories you might as well enjoy them while it lasts.

I was going to garden... Honest!