What do you do with all your credit?

[deltatee]

@bmhill I was obsessed with my score when I was in the middle of my mortgage. My lender used the middle score to determine my interest rate, and thay score was right on the line between the lowest interest rate and a slightly higher rate. MyFICO credit monitoring was instrumental in making sure I towed that line until my mortgage closed. I definitely recommend keeping it around until you wrap up the mortgage.

Now that I have my mortgage and no major apps on the horizon, i can relax and quit obsessing ovet every tiny movement in my score. Now i rely on free services for monitoring and my cards for scores.

[kuku4koco]

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@Anonymous wrote:
Jbsea, to your point about being obsessed with credit, I thought I would only need this forum until my mortgage but because I didn't credit build (with cards ) beforehand and knew NOTHING about rewards , now I have new goals after mortgage closes. But I think I will stop paying for score updates. Once I app spree after next week I'm going to cancel my subscription and just keep free services. Since I'll be gardening awhile, I really don't want to become obsessed with scoring Anymore. Because there will be nothing to app for. I believe some of the credit cards I will have come with free ficos anyway and I'll utilize that for occasional monitoring. in 6 months my credit profile will looks a world different anyway (it kind of annoys me when I see people's responses to other posters and they act like they were born with 800+ scores and they are so patronizing...MAYBE some have always used their credit perfectly but IMO that's a unicorn). So I really appreciate yours and others responses to this thread and not being condescending lol.

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LOL! No kidding, it's as if they grew their credit before they grew a personality.... 

My credit limits are just a couple thousand below my annual income (low/retired) and plenty manageable, with the exception of the BOA 123 cash rewards... It's my newest addition and my only cash back, so I actually only earned $1.23 on that last month  I'm such a big spender... haha!! It's all new to me, I'm just here to enjoy the ride!!  Great post BTW and congrats on your new home!

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

BOA Better balance:  7500 limit-  I place a 42 dollar internet bill on it monthly. 

BOA Cash Rewards:  5000 limit-  I put my netflix on this to keep it active.  Other than that it has no use I can beat it with other cards. 

Cap 1 Quicksilver:  10,000 limit-  I get 2% with Discover it so I just buy something small with this every once in a while to keep it active. 

Sallie Mae:  5,000 limit-  Gas+Groceries+Amazon when one of my 5% cards doesn't have it.  This gets the majority of my spend.

Discover It-  14000 limit-  Discover Deals general spend (for double cash back) and 5% categories

Chase Freedom-  3000 limit-  5% categories that Discover It doesn't have. 

AARP Rewards-  4500 limit-  Dining at places that I don't get a gift card in advance for. 

Amex Blue Cash Everyday 10000 limit-  Is beat by everything I have so I just use it every once in a while to keep it active.   

For the most part Discover It and Sallie Mae get the most work.  I use cards that give me the best rewards for what I'm buying.  I have 59,000 in available credit and probably only spend around 1100 on credit cards each month.  So I guess for the most part you could say I don't do anything with most of my credit. 

Big thing to keep in mind is to just spend on what you want/need.  Do not "chase" rewards simply because you have a good rate of return.  10% is a great deal on discover it, but it will cost you if you buy a bunch of stuff you would not have bought simply to "get" the reward.  The way I think of rewards is not as money "earned" but as money saved.  As in I saved 10 dollars by using my Discover It for the 100 on Amazon, not that I "made" 10 bucks by spending that 100. 

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THIS. This is how I used to manage credit. I used it to buy "extra" stuff - trips I couldn't afford, going out to eat outside of my budget, clothes etc. Now that I am a grown up I realize that what I really need to use them for is the stuff I already spend money on and make the "extra" stuff a rarer occurance. I can imagine putting a big trip on a credit card as long as I have beforehand budgeted and thought out how I will pay it off. That works really well if you're 0% interest at the time and basically borrowed money for free. This is really great advice, thanks for your post!

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

BOA Better balance:  7500 limit-  I place a 42 dollar internet bill on it monthly. 

BOA Cash Rewards:  5000 limit-  I put my netflix on this to keep it active.  Other than that it has no use I can beat it with other cards. 

Cap 1 Quicksilver:  10,000 limit-  I get 2% with Discover it so I just buy something small with this every once in a while to keep it active. 

Sallie Mae:  5,000 limit-  Gas+Groceries+Amazon when one of my 5% cards doesn't have it.  This gets the majority of my spend.

Discover It-  14000 limit-  Discover Deals general spend (for double cash back) and 5% categories

Chase Freedom-  3000 limit-  5% categories that Discover It doesn't have. 

AARP Rewards-  4500 limit-  Dining at places that I don't get a gift card in advance for. 

Amex Blue Cash Everyday 10000 limit-  Is beat by everything I have so I just use it every once in a while to keep it active.   

For the most part Discover It and Sallie Mae get the most work.  I use cards that give me the best rewards for what I'm buying.  I have 59,000 in available credit and probably only spend around 1100 on credit cards each month.  So I guess for the most part you could say I don't do anything with most of my credit. 

Big thing to keep in mind is to just spend on what you want/need.  Do not "chase" rewards simply because you have a good rate of return.  10% is a great deal on discover it, but it will cost you if you buy a bunch of stuff you would not have bought simply to "get" the reward.  The way I think of rewards is not as money "earned" but as money saved.  As in I saved 10 dollars by using my Discover It for the 100 on Amazon, not that I "made" 10 bucks by spending that 100. 

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THIS. This is how I used to manage credit. I used it to buy "extra" stuff - trips I couldn't afford, going out to eat outside of my budget, clothes etc. Now that I am a grown up I realize that what I really need to use them for is the stuff I already spend money on and make the "extra" stuff a rarer occurance. I can imagine putting a big trip on a credit card as long as I have beforehand budgeted and thought out how I will pay it off. That works really well if you're 0% interest at the time and basically borrowed money for free. This is really great advice, thanks for your post!

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I still fight this at times (I think we all do).  It's difficult and the psychology behind spending more while using plastic is a very real thing.  It's much easier for me to shop at Amazon right now knowing I'm getting 10% off when using my Discover.  We talk a lot about the amounts that it costs credit card companies when they have 5% or 10% deals etc, but how much does it cost us?  A lot if we take a decent return on something and use it to spend money on stuff we wouldn't without it. 

It works a lot like coupons.  They are great to save on stuff you want, but if they entice you to buy things you wouldn't (because hey look at that deal) then they are costing you money. 

[Anonymous]

On my phone so I can't quote, but the patronizing is why I removed info from my SIG. A string of numbers doesn't really tell your credit profile, does it? My daughter's score is 690/690/675. She is disabled, has no credit of her own, is AU on my cards, and has 1 medical collection for $51. But those numbers don't tell all that lol.
I enjoy the helpful posts, and for the others....well, some folks just need to eat more bran.

[Anonymous]

I have just enough credit to be able to move all of my bills to any of my cards to maximize on better promos. Right now everything is on Discover because of the double promo. If I get the DC next year, hopefully I can move all bills to that card. If not, I can move them all to my QS1. Groceries and gas always stay on BCE. I'm not sure what else to do with my credit. I am not interested in a car or home loan right now, so I guess I am just using it to maximize cash back on bills and purchases that I would be spending on regardless of the cards.

[Anonymous]

@Anniepoo that's my goal as far as bank cards go. Every bill I have (except for my credit cards) falls due the first week of the month. I want to be able to put them on the card and pay it off throughout the month without killing my util. I don't need super high limits, don't really want them. I admit I am dazzled when I see some people's limits. If they can afford it, then yay! I might be there myself some day. Just not today.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:
On my phone so I can't quote, but the patronizing is why I removed info from my SIG. A string of numbers doesn't really tell your credit profile, does it? My daughter's score is 690/690/675. She is disabled, has no credit of her own, is AU on my cards, and has 1 medical collection for $51. But those numbers don't tell all that lol.
I enjoy the helpful posts, and for the others....well, some folks just need to eat more bran.

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This is a good point. Unfortunately, we've all been relegated to numbers in our society. I do like that there are people on here who make a lot of money and have great CL's and scores and are so helpful to us who are trying to rebuild. I hope to help someone else someday the way I've been helped now that I know a lot more. My sister has a ton of medical collections and just doesn't really make enough to make ends meat much less pay for all her past transgressions. I told her when she was ready to clean it all up to come to me and I'll help her. That would probably be way more "human" than just telling her "well why did you get yourself into this mess?".

[Open123]

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@Anonymous wrote:

That would probably be way more "human" than just telling her "well why did you get yourself into this mess?".

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+1

Right, I think if we "Americans" focussed more on resolution, and less on assigning blame, we'd be much better off as a society.  Unless we have a time machine, it only matters how we'll solve a problem, not the reasons for its origination.

[Anonymous]

Exactly. Sometimes you just need to catch a break. I look at attitudes this way. If you have a fly buzzing around your house, you can kill it with a flyswatter. Or you can kill it with a sledgehammer. The end result is the same. But one way does a lot more harm than good. Im not fond of sledgehammers. But meh... I'm weird like that.