Too Many Credit Cards With Balances! A lil Overwhelming!

[mrlimo]

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@CodeMonkey wrote:

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@jmbfl wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:
7 cards? All relatively new? Pay them off and cancel them. 4 cards is plenty. What does anybody need 7 cards for? If they're new, your history will be so small that it won't make much difference. Your credit limits will grow over time with 4 credit cards that are paid in full monthly.

Heck, I just have 1 credit card. Personally 2-3 cards is the max I'd want to have to deal with. Simplicity is priceless.

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Don't do this. This is not sound advice.

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I would respectfully disagree - what is good for FICO is not necessarily good for everyone's individual financial situations.

If someone feels they are unable to effectively manage X number of cards and want to cut down to Y, not doing so may cause far more harm than the few FICO points they lose due to util (and eventually age, 10 years down the road).

If you honestly don't have the willpower to restrain yourself from using available credit, removing your access to it entirely until you can overcome the issue is probably a wise option. Credit card debt can be very, very damaging - not just to your FICO score.

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before I would cancel the account I would cut the card in too and just leave it open, you can always report it dammaged or lost and replace the actual card later if you see fit that you can safely manage it then. Closeing the account is permenant and loosing the credit history costs time in the future. First thing any buisness tell you is time is money and if you loose time your losing money.

[CodeMonkey]

Yeah, destroying the cards can work - problem is, you can still use them for online charges (esp. Citi cards, which you can generate virtual account numbers for even if you don't have the physical cards any longer).

So if someone lacks the willpower to keep the plastic parked in their wallet, chances are they will have a tough time not using them for online charges given the opportunity.

The important thing is to be honest with yourself about whether or not you can handle the temptation - if you can't, don't feel bad at all about cancelling those suckers. You'll be saving yourself a lot of heartache in the long run, and you can always rebuild your credit portfolio slowly once you feel you're able to manage the impulses more effectively (if ever).

[Schoolbuskid]

Thanks to everyone...but i dont plan on closing the cards...proabably just stop using them...i dont think i can afford losing the history....and plus i want to keep them! I dont make alot of money a month but, i do get paid at the end of this month so i will make a pretty good payment on my cards.

[Anonymous]

Perhaps I should jump in here and explain why I advised closing some of them.

My wife is the perfect example of too many cards, too many bills. She has 5 credit cards (all due on different days), a vehicle loan, a monthly car insurance bill, and a cell phone bill.....She gets paid bi-weekly.

She is awful when it comes to paying things on time. So she's gotten late charges on the credit cards. At $39 per late fee, it's a hard one to swallow. They're quick to raise the APR when you do that too. With 5 credit cards, she's always forgetting her user name/password when she tries to pay them. And paying on the phone costs about $10 (which I think is a rip off)

Now I on the other hand live up to my user name. I refuse to even pay credit card interest never mind a late fee. I pay my car insurance yearly in a lump sum, I did the 1 year pre-paid VOIP home telephone deal. No car loan. But the overall point I'm trying to make is that I don't have a ton of bills that all need to be paid at different points. I don't have to schedule when stuff gets paid. And I don't have to worry about was my bill due yesterday?

I did recommend my wife close her First Premier card. They've been written about on the board in great length. Very expensive fees. My wife had that card for 9 years!!! Still at a $250 credit limit. I did the math with their monthly and annual fees and it's somewhere around $1,000 she's shelled out to them. That's without counting interest or late/over fees....The kick in the teeth from First Premier happened last month. We never got a bill from them. The same month they decided to charge the $50 annual fee. With the annual fee and late fee tacked on, that put her over the $250 limit which meant (you guessed it) an over the limit fee.....She paid in full and canceled First Premier last week. We were both happy to get those leaches off her back.


Now if you can pay 7 cards off in full and then hide the cards and forget about them, great. But with a user name like SchoolBusKid, I'm guessing that you're young. Not much credit history. So closing down a credit card that's 9 months old isn't going to have the same effect that closing down a card that you've had for 5 years would have.

Now I'll agree that the best FICO scores are going to go to the people who have 5-7 credit cards with $10,000 limits on each of them with very little or no balance owing....But you're not going to go wrong at all just having a small amount of cards either. As long as they're paid in full every month before the due date, you'll qualify for the best mortgages/loans/future optional credit cards you want.

I have 1 credit card in the US currently. I have 1 year of credit history in the US. (When you immigrate here your credit starts from scratch no matter how good it was in your old country) I'll probably add 1 or 2 more cards in the future. But I'm in no hurry. I really like my Chase Freedom card. When I lived in Canada, I only had 2 credit cards. I also had a 775 FICO score when I lived there. It was frustrating that my score didn't travel with me. But not much you can do about that.

Eat your vitamins, stay in school, and pay your credit cards!

Message Edited by Cheapskate on 09-06-2008 10:21 PM

[Scamp]

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Cheapskate wrote:
Perhaps I should jump in here and explain why I advised closing some of them.

My wife is the perfect example of too many cards, too many bills. She has 5 credit cards (all due on different days), a vehicle loan, a monthly car insurance bill, and a cell phone bill.....She gets paid bi-weekly.

She is awful when it comes to paying things on time. So she's gotten late charges on the credit cards. At $39 per late fee, it's a hard one to swallow. They're quick to raise the APR when you do that too. With 5 credit cards, she's always forgetting her user name/password when she tries to pay them. And paying on the phone costs about $10 (which I think is a rip off)

Message Edited by Cheapskate on 09-06-2008 10:21 PM

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Have you and your wife considered calling up her CCC's and having her statement/payment due dates changed?  And setting up a 'cheat sheet' of her usernames and passwords to help her remember them?  And setting up some kind of reminder system of the payment dates?

When I started adding CC's as part of my rebuilding process, after finding these fora, it nearly gave me a nervous breakdown at first, trying to keep track of the new statement and payment due dates, until I got them all lined up so that I only  had to remember to make payments on everything right after payday, twice a month, to ensure I was not only on time with all payments out of one paycheck but also throwing a little extra at balances out of the other one, when I had cash to spare.  One paycheck basically is my 'pay rent' and one util bill paycheck (plus extra on cc's, when possible); the other is my 'pay all other bills' paycheck.  On that day, I actually make a list of all my creditors and check them off as I pay them, to make sure I don't 'space' anybody.

Most websites have a 'forgot username/password?' option, but if using that isn't possible, I do recommend some kind of cheat sheet to help her remember hers.

Lots of the free, web-based emails also have a calendar option on which you can set up emailed reminders  - I use mine mostly to keep track of birthdays and have my calendar email me reminders at two weeks and one week prior to all birthdays, to give me plenty of time to buy and mail a card.  Doing something similar for your wife's various payment due dates might really help her cut down on those late/missed payment fees, phone payment fees, etc.

FWIW.  Hope it's helpful.

[Anonymous]

Never, ever, ever, ever be late with Chase Bank.  I went through some tough times with them when I was late once. G.L. >>>>Los Angeles, California

[Schoolbuskid]

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gilbert22 wrote:

Never, ever, ever, ever be late with Chase Bank.  I went through some tough times with them when I was late once. G.L. >>>>Los Angeles, California

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Too late for that i was late two days....

[future]

school did you think about merging the cap 1 cc, this way its one less bill

[Schoolbuskid]

I could do that but right now, it would make the minimum payment larger, and im just getting back to work...oh and i just checked my cap one account and they raised my rewards card from 600 to 1100, just like my platinum and that card was almost maxed out! I didnt think that would happen!

[Schoolbuskid]

I dont really have a major update for you guys, i didnt realize how long ago i posted this alot has happend since then so here is my current situation, still bad i know, but i am getting there! It was alot worse!

Cap 1-1100/1037

Cap 1-1100/1050

Chase BP-1700/1593

Chase-200/180

Kay-1000/858

Truliant FCU-1500/1460

Walmart-700/622

Bank of the Carolinas-1000/980

Macys-100/65

I probably asked before, but what is the best way to get these balances down. i will be getting about 1200 in tax return, but i have to give my mom 500 of it! So i have about 700 to apply to those balances and plus my regular pay, which i could only pay about 200 from!

I was think paying 200 each on my cap 1 accounts, and paying off the chase card! My mom uses the Macys card so she's going to pay that!

Your help is appreciated!

Chad