Do yourself a favor and never go back to that advisor. He obviously has no idea what he's talking about. I dont know what kind of income you have, but most people would have a hard time spreading good use across 10+ cards. Oldman is right. After your 3rd card you no longer see any scoring benefits for adding card accounts. You would have to add an active installment loan for the last of the bonus points.
Seeing as how you're too young to drunk app, then you must be under 21. Here's some advice I wish I had gotten at that age. Save up $1500, more would be preferable, and go see an investor at Charles Schwab, or Vanguard, or whoever you like. If you have serious financial goals, that should have been your first stop. You can always rebuild a savings or your credit, but you can never get back that lost time for investing. Building your credit only makes incurring debt more accessible. Make your money work for you and do it early.
@Save-n-Invest
Sorry, wasnt trying to tag you save-n-invest
Here is a tip.
You don't have to worry about cards that will maximize your rewards because you will be using them all the time.
Now lets talk about sock drawer cards which are cards that don't earn as much as your go to cards. You need to use those cards at least once every 6 month. All you need to do is make a schedule and have it rotate across those cards. You can use one card every month or use them all every quarter but make a schedule. Now the thing is you don't really wanna put actual transactions on them because then you don't earn much on those transactions. So what you can do is go to Amazon.com and reload your gift card balance by $1/per useless card. Repeat this for all useless cards when it's their turn to be used and whenever you buy something from Amazon just pay using this gift card.
Thanks,
When you go to use your cards ,if you are shooting for rewards just use the one you have that offers the most back for your spend. If at the moment its just a swipe, use the card every 3-6 months and you should be fine
. We dont really need 10 cards for most things in life but dorsnt mean we cant have them. Remember here on this forum the majority here are all about rewards, and thats cool, but at the end of the day , only you can decide what works for you. Enjoy your new cards, learn their benefits and you will find the best way to make them grow
. We dont really need 10 cards for most things in life but dorsnt mean we cant have them. Remember here on this forum the majority here are all about rewards, and thats cool, but at the end of the day , only you can decide what works for you. Enjoy your new cards, learn their benefits and you will find the best way to make them grow
Others have already given this advice, but I'll just reiterate what they've said: Discover It for the 5% categories (which usually include things like restaurants, groceries, and gas...which most every human being can use), AmEx BCE for groceries (when it's not a Discover category), and Citi Double Cash for everything else. This will maximize your rewards, and these are three good "keeper" cards that also keep your history growing with three different lenders.
You have three CapOne cards, so if you're interested in keeping a good relationship with them, maybe put Netflix or something on the most valuable of those cards and set it to autopay.
I'm not sure what the motivation was for the Venture One, but it's essentially a travel card, so any points you earn on that one must be redeemed for travel. It comes with a 20,000 point sign-up bonus after $1,000 spend in the first three months too, which equals $212.50 that you can spend on travel. So my suggestion is that when you get this card, use it for everything until you meet the $1,000 minimum spend requirement to receive the sign-up bonus. Then you can go back to using Discover, AmEx, and Citi DC.
I had one card for most of my life up until 2016 when I discovered how useful these things can be, and that I had excellent credit and could basically get any card I wanted. I had a vacation coming up, and I apped with the goal in mind of helping pay for that vacation. I'm not sure of the exact count now, because I've opened and already closed some of those cards, but I think I opened 15 cards in a year. Many of them got used for their sign-up bonus and stuffed in the sock drawer. Some of those I've closed myself since, some are just sitting their until they get closed by the cc company. I don't want the headache of keeping up with that many different cards, and I have/had them with every major cc issuer (AmEx, BOA, Barclays, CapOne, Chase, Citi, Discover). Having 5 or fewer valuable rewards cards that all serve their specific purpose is much more to my taste. I have 8 cards right now that never get any spend, 1 that gets Netflix and Spotify on it just to keep it active, and three that are always in my purse and get used for all of my spending. It makes it much easier than trying to juggle 12 cards and remember which ones I'm using for what and when.
My advice is to be a little more particular in the future about what cards you pick up. I got some that I should never have gotten, which wasted inquiries (which ding your credit) and now are chunked in a drawer doing absolutely nothing aside from boosting my available credit. I'd rather boost that number by having useful cards with high credit lines, and am culling and growing appropriately to make that happen. I'd strongly suggest not falling into the same mistakes I made for your future apps.
Congrats though! It always feels nice to be "accepted" for a new card. In fact, I think it can be downright addictive. So be careful of that too.