OK, first my number of credit cards is high, close to thirty. Many of those are store cards that I took the current deal on, but only a few have very small balances on them. Recently we have paid off over 40,000.00 in bank card debt and still have five of our bank cards with 30000.00 of debt left on them, but we are making more than the minimum payments and when the bonuses come in we make chunky payments. Yes are debts are high and we are working on it. That's the point here, so please do not chastise me for my dire circumstances.
We have been told not to close credit cards, but I could easily close most of the store cards because I never use them and if I do it is to get hte current deal. Then I pay them off within the month. I THOUGHT this would show responsibility. Our scores have been coming up drastically, but just recently after using less than a thousand on a few of the store cards, for an upcoming vacation, my store cards are being denied and one of my bank cards are reporting my score at 676. I also have a reward card that we use all month long and pay off each month. We have two car payments, a mortgage, a school loan and regular life bills. None of these payments are ever late.
How can I win at this game? Since I have twenty store cards should I close some of them? Should I just not use anything? Will this lower the scores more? What direction should I take? Should I spend the money to buy all three reports on a regular basis? Help!
