How many credit cards is too much?

[Anonymous]

 Hi everyone, 

I am around 1 yr. 3 months or so into my credit journey. I have 3 general everyday credit cards: US Bank Student Card $500, US Bank Cash Back+ for $2200, and a Chase Freedom Unlimited for $1800. I also have one for Kohl's at $1000, and one at Paypal for $1250. My FICO score 753, 746, and 735. I have seen some things about travel hacking (using credit cards for the point spend bonus) in order to gain free trips and seen some people with what it seems like ( a lot of success in doing so). I don't know if I like this idea for the picture of my long-term credit but I obviously do like the idea behind traveling for a low price or next to free? What are your thoughts on this?

One thing I have seen is the people who buy the American Express Prepaid card with (no reload price at some locations) and it has a $1 fee a month that is waived if you put more than $500 on it a month? In return, this would obviously be easy to pay off your credit card (in my case my Chase card) as the customer service said I could pay it off through American Express. Is putting money onto a prepaid card, and then doing this beneficial in terms of points? I am probably over-thinking this, but I am curious as to everyone's thoughts on this. 

Also, how many credits cards is too many? At some level does this look fishy to the banks, or will this benefit me in the long-term in terms of my total accounts and account age?

Thank you for your answers. 

Just found this ( I will quote it and not link due to advertising purposes e.g.) 
"The average number of credit cards Americans own is three to four. According to Credit Karma, there is a correlation between having a high credit score (800+) and having more credit cards (7), compared to people with lower scores. This could be because people with higher credit scores are able to open more credit cards, though. People who chase travel rewards in particular tend to have a great many cards open at a time (though not as much as the record holder in the Guinness Book of World Records, who has 1,497 cards with a $1.7 million credit line and nearly perfect credit)." I think that is insane someone has over 1,000 credit cards.

[Revelate]

Some banks care, others don't at all... there are people with over a hundred CC's out there though I wouldn't suggest anyone go this far... it's basically sport for them.

I have some FICO models complaining that I have too many tradelines now, but it's hard to say what the explicit number is.  Less than 10 though is certainly not a problem but I've basically never been denied except for a flier CLI (which I was certain I wasn't going to get) and flailing against the Chase 5/24 rule which was just my opening too many accounts recently and missing out on a roughly $1000 bonus as a result.  Whoops.

[Anonymous]

I am glad to see that feedback from a moderator that is probably very active here on the forums... Some family members seem to think that I am overdoing it? I have 3%-5% utilization ratio, 4 hard inquiries, and 3 are supposed to expire this Fall... I also wanted to stay within chases 4/24 rule or 5/24 whatever it was... So, if I am keeping a good utilization and I am managing them all well while keeping low on the inquiries? Would you say go for it up until 9-10? (ALSO: I never ever have more than $100 in debt at any one given time, it's also paid off in full every month.) 

[Anonymous]

I'd love to hear Revelate take a guess as to where the trigger point is for when FICO begins to assess a penalty for "too many" cards.

Note to Delta:

*  We know for a fact that some FICO models must have some internal line in the sand where they begin to assess such a penalty -- because Revelate has seen a negative reason statement about it.

*  I believe he has only seen this on models earlier than FICO 8.  Thus it is possible that this idea of "too many" went away with FICO 8 (though maybe it is still there).

*  Even for those models where it is there, it is possible for a person to have MANY credit cards and yet still have high scores in those models, so the penalty can't be ginormous.  Actually a fun research question would be to start a thread asking people who have 21+ open cards what their FICO 98, 04, 8, and 9 scores are -- just to see if we can find some people with very high scores in all of the models.  Contributor SouthJ would be a good person to ask -- I think he has a lot.

[SouthJamaica]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

 Hi everyone, 

I am around 1 yr. 3 months or so into my credit journey. I have 3 general everyday credit cards: US Bank Student Card $500, US Bank Cash Back+ for $2200, and a Chase Freedom Unlimited for $1800. I also have one for Kohl's at $1000, and one at Paypal for $1250. My FICO score 753, 746, and 735. I have seen some things about travel hacking (using credit cards for the point spend bonus) in order to gain free trips and seen some people with what it seems like ( a lot of success in doing so). I don't know if I like this idea for the picture of my long-term credit but I obviously do like the idea behind traveling for a low price or next to free? What are your thoughts on this?

One thing I have seen is the people who buy the American Express Prepaid card with (no reload price at some locations) and it has a $1 fee a month that is waived if you put more than $500 on it a month? In return, this would obviously be easy to pay off your credit card (in my case my Chase card) as the customer service said I could pay it off through American Express. Is putting money onto a prepaid card, and then doing this beneficial in terms of points? I am probably over-thinking this, but I am curious as to everyone's thoughts on this. 

Also, how many credits cards is too many? At some level does this look fishy to the banks, or will this benefit me in the long-term in terms of my total accounts and account age?

Thank you for your answers. 

Just found this ( I will quote it and not link due to advertising purposes e.g.) 
"The average number of credit cards Americans own is three to four. According to Credit Karma, there is a correlation between having a high credit score (800+) and having more credit cards (7), compared to people with lower scores. This could be because people with higher credit scores are able to open more credit cards, though. People who chase travel rewards in particular tend to have a great many cards open at a time (though not as much as the record holder in the Guinness Book of World Records, who has 1,497 cards with a $1.7 million credit line and nearly perfect credit)." I think that is insane someone has over 1,000 credit cards.

---

Credit Karma is full of baloney. You have more than enough cards right now. Take good care of them and you'll be at 850 one of these days.

[HeavenOhio]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

 …there is a correlation between having a high credit score (800+) and having more credit cards (7), compared to people with lower scores. This could be because people with higher credit scores are able to open more credit cards, though. People who chase travel rewards in particular tend to have a great many cards open at a time (though not as much as the record holder in the Guinness Book of World Records, who has 1,497 cards with a $1.7 million credit line and nearly perfect credit)." I think that is insane someone has over 1,000 credit cards.

---

Correlation doesn't mean causation. All it means is that people with more than a couple of cards tend to have higher scores. But having more cards isn't necessarily the cause of the higher scores.

That said, three cards is better for your score than one or two. And some say that five is better than three. But after that, it's all about using the cards responsibly.

I think that bonus-chasers and churners are likely to have somewhat lower scores than they would if they didn't play that game. But that would be because of inquiries and new accounts rather than the number of cards they hold.

Keep in mind that sites like Karma are in the business of getting people to apply for cards. If there's a piece of information they can use to help them do this, they're going to use it.

Back to the original question, the answer is largely subjective. For most people, too many cards means having more cards than they wish to manage.

[Anonymous]

Does 480k total revolving mean credit line?

[HeavenOhio]

That's the total of all of SJ's credit limits.

[SouthJamaica]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

Does 480k total revolving mean credit line?

---

It means that's the total of my revolving credit limits.

[Anonymous]

I gotcha, that's pretty great!