Wow, I haven't been here in so many years. I was a regular on here and learned so much, but it's been so long that I have just about forgotten everything. Just call me green now 
Anyway, I have quite a few cards and I hadn't been using them all. I know that I need to keep some activity on them, so what I've done is spread out some of my bills over them and are paid in full each month. I just started doing this in August because I happened to look at my reports and realized that I hadn't used some of them in almost a year and I didn't want them to close them.
So my question is how do you handle sock drawer cards and how often should they be used? Does it affect your score constantly showing activity on all of your cards every month? Or would it be better to just use them periodically and put my spend on one or two cards?
Each company has their own dont use it lose it. Get a tank of gas. Let it report. PIF. Scores arent affected for non use. On the other hand. If you have a SD card and want a CLI. Use it frequently. Beter chance then.
@Rhaeny wrote:Wow, I haven't been here in so many years. I was a regular on here and learned so much, but it's been so long that I have just about forgotten everything. Just call me green now
Anyway, I have quite a few cards and I hadn't been using them all. I know that I need to keep some activity on them, so what I've done is spread out some of my bills over them and are paid in full each month. I just started doing this in August because I happened to look at my reports and realized that I hadn't used some of them in almost a year and I didn't want them to close them.
So my question is how do you handle sock drawer cards and how often should they be used? Does it affect your score constantly showing activity on all of your cards every month? Or would it be better to just use them periodically and put my spend on one or two cards?
1. I don't have sock drawer cards. I try to use everything at least once a month.
2. No the amount of activity there is on the card does not affect your score. It can, however, affect your relationship with the lender.
3. As to whether it's best to concentrate spend on one or two cards, that's entirely a personal decision.
4. There has been some discussion above about reporting balances. The reported balance does not indicate what your activity has been. There are several fields in the credit reports which indicate whether there has been activity, and how much.
@SouthJamaica wrote:
4. There has been some discussion above about reporting balances. The reported balance does not indicate what your activity has been. There are several fields in the credit reports which indicate whether there has been activity, and how much.
Yes. That is something that is commonly misunderstood here. Utilization is the balance that gets reported, usually the statement balance. It has nothing to do with how much the card is utilized in between those dates.
If your balance is $0, your utilization is 0%.
If you have a $500 balance and a $1000 limit, utilization is 50%.
It makes no difference if you run it up to the limit and pay it off several times during the month or if you don't use it at all. Utilization is only dependent on the balance on the date it gets reported.
EQ8 780, TU8 741, EX8 765 as of May 19
@Rhaeny wrote:So my question is how do you handle sock drawer cards and how often should they be used? Does it affect your score constantly showing activity on all of your cards every month? Or would it be better to just use them periodically and put my spend on one or two cards?
6 months is a pretty safe, conserative amount of time to make sure cards get usage this often. cards used at least every 6 months pretty much never get closed for inactivity.
as you've seen, it's not unreasonable for a card to go a year, if not 2+ without being closed for inactivity, but this can depend widely on the lender.
I would either schedule a bill to go out on all of them monthly, or just schedule two days a year 6 months apart to put a dollar charge on any SD cards to keep them in use so you're not closed for inactivity
