I believe that this question arises because once you hit 30 TL's, you get a red flag next to "total number of accounts" on the Credit-at-a-Glance screen. The legend at the bottom states "Red Flag = Marks an aspect of your credit that is hurting your FICO® score." So for instance, I have a red flag for late payments and now for accounts opened in last year. These flags are matched by negative comments on screen 2 (Understanding Your Score.)
The odd thing is that we have members who have gotten this red flag once they hit 30, but they haven't gotten a negative comment. One possibility is that there are 3 or 4 other negative issues with their reports that carry more weight, so there is simply no room to display yet another comment.
I too would be quickly carried off to the local Special Place if I tried to manage 30 open credit cards! One thing to remember is that this "total number of accounts" includes all TL's, not just revolving, and open and closed TL's. We have had members get the flag because they have a student loan for each semester of college and grad school, so let's say 14, and the loans were consolidated, so the old individual closed loans are now being counted plus the new loans. Add in a few car loans, a personal loan, the usual starter or rebuilder cards that are replaced by good ones, a few accidental cards that were acquired when messing around on sites
, an ARM, and then a fixed rate mortgage that replaced the ARM, and it wouldn't be that unusual to hit 30.
I'm beginning to think that whatever penalty might be assessed for "too many accounts" is relatively small. It might be like the CFL ding, that only appears after just about everything else has been cleaned up. So, annoying but inconsequential.
That testimony to the FTC was in the 1990's, and it echoes the High Achievers bit about only having had a few cards over their entire lives:
Number of credit cards: FICO High Achievers have an average of 4 to 5 credit cards (including open and closed cards, bank cards and department store cards).
This has got to come from the days of "Hazel" and Mr. and Mrs. B. Americans use credit very differently these days. I make money off my cards, so although I'm going to start cutting them back, there is no way I would confine myself to 5 cards over my lifetime. (I'd need a time machine to do this, as I'm already beyond this point!) My 80-year-old mother is very conservative financially, but she has had store cards since the fifties, and she probably has two entire Visas as well, so even she doesn't fit this. IMO, this is one of those dinosaur statistics that needs to be re-examined and updated.
* Credit is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master. * Who's the boss --you or your credit?
FICO's: EQ 781 - TU 793 - EX 779 (from PSECU) - Done credit hunting; having fun with credit gardening. - EQ 590 on 5/14/2007