Card Management Techniques

[Anonymous]

I think we went a little overboard. Between DW and I we have just over 30 CCs and ~$100k in available credit.... since October. Prior to that and myfico $9k tops at 100% utilization. SMH.

I'm working hard to get all the spend bonuses met then it's all about streamlining. I would like to keep a few cards in active rotation and the others passively working. My spreadsheet already overwhelms me. 😱. what are you all doing to not turn this into a nightmare? I can only imagine... Ron1 and CA? TIA

[lg8302ch]

The most important is to make sure to never miss a payment !  I would set all cards to autopay for at least minimum payment so in case you would forget to pay the autopay will kick in. Like this it still gives you the option to make additional payments for more.  This is my safety line but I try to manually make my payments for more.  Or you can set up autopay for full statement balance and not carry balances.  And set all kind of alerts with reminders

[NRB525]

Congratulations on all the new cards and credit... Be careful what you wish for, eh?

My card management has been relatively easy: So many cards have balances to be paid down, that finding amounts, finding new charges to keep them busy has not been an issue. However, with 17 cards, and more of them turning up with no ongoing balances to pay off, I'm starting to wonder where I have to begin cutting. And none of my cards are store cards.

There's no easy answer, other than, you probably want to decide now which cards (3 of them? 5?) are the keepers for the really long term. Those are the ones you need to be certain to get back to, to use regularly, to keep in the good graces with those banks. There is no certainty that unused cards will be closed; my Freedom card went a year without any charges, but unused cards are potentially going to get closed by lender.

[Anonymous]

I use Mint Bills (formerly Check) to keep track of everything, but on the credit card page in particular it shows your total credit limit, your total available credit, and lists balances  for each individual card, APR, due dates, etc etc etc.  I personally pay my cards and other bills from there too (I've been using Check forever, it's safe and fast) but that's a personal preference thing.  They email when new bills post (and if you have the app you get a push notification too) and it'll also bug you a couple times throughout the month before the payment is due if you haven't paid it yet so that makes it useful for not forgetting a bill someplace.  I would definitely recommend some type of personal finance app like that for the notifications if it starts to get crazy with the multiple cards.

I only have a couple cards right now so it's no biggie for me, but once I get to where I want to be I'll probably offload my subscriptions to Netflix, Hulu, etc onto cards I don't use often to keep them going because those are easy to have the card pay and then set an auto pay for the balance a couple days later, because it's the same every month.  

[Anonymous]

I currently have a super cool app on my phone that I use to manage all my payments utilities, CC bills etc. It's called Mint Bills by Intuit. (hopefully that's not a plug and if it is and against forum rules... my apologies mods). thankfully haven't missed a payment in years. I'll definitely be axing my store cards soon. I have a few. DW only has one. I think I may go the route of parking a few balances and paying minimums for a while. we collected a bunch of 0% intro period cards so that will work for now then I'll probably just find a bunch of low cost recurring services like HP instant ink, iCloud storage etc. Thanks for the input lg8302ch, NRB525 👍🏿

[Anonymous]

michikade you're obviously one of the cool kids!!! thanks

[Kostya1992]

Close all the crap cards.

[Anonymous]

Using a Google spreadsheet. Assets like checking accounts, prepaid cards, incoming checks etc on the left and liabilities (credit cards) on the right. All current balances and statement cut dates show in yellow when <10 days and red when <5 days. Bottom line shows my current surplus adding up all numbers so I know where I stand in total.

I don't need to pay particular attention to bill due dates as my cards usually close with $0 on them. Due to the color marking I know on first look which card to pay off first before the statement cuts.

[takeshi74]

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@Anonymous wrote:
what are you all doing to not turn this into a nightmare?

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Carefully considering cards in the first place to avoid ending up at an unmanageable number but it's too late for that for you.  If you know you can manage 30 that's one thing but it's risky to end up with 30 without any idea of how you're going to manage them.  While we say number of cards doesn't matter one has to be able to manage them and many seem to get caught up in the excitement and thrill of approvals and being able to obtain new cards only to get into trouble.  Good luck and be careful.  Make sure you can actively monitor all 30 accounts for fraud.

[Anonymous]

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@takeshi74 wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:
what are you all doing to not turn this into a nightmare?

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Carefully considering cards in the first place to avoid ending up at an unmanageable number but it's too late for that for you.  If you know you can manage 30 that's one thing but it's risky to end up with 30 without any idea of how you're going to manage them.  While we say number of cards doesn't matter one has to be able to manage them and many seem to get caught up in the excitement and thrill of approvals and being able to obtain new cards only to get into trouble.  Good luck and be careful.  Make sure you can actively monitor all 30 accounts for fraud.

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thanks for the wise words. not at nightmare level yet but I definitely want to avoid getting there. so far so good. thanks for the tip on fraud monitoring too. definitely a must. since someone recently went HAM on my BOA debit business card I have alerts on every card we have going directly to my cell so hopefully that will do the trick.

cheers