I need advice on which card to keep

[HeavenOhio]

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@Anonymous wrote:
Keep them unless you're doing it because of annual fees, the terms, or something like bad customer service.

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Of if they've become a pain to manage. Or on rare occasions, if you feel you need to trim your overall limits.

Note that VantageScore does include closed accounts just like FICO. It's Credit Karma's front end software that ignores them. Sites that provide FICO scores could potentially break that information in the same way. And there are VantageScore sites that report account age stats correctly.

I'm not sure what you mean by closed accounts supressing your AAoA for 15 years. Closed accounts could drop from one's report tomorrow, but they're likely to remain on your report for "up to 10 years," as the bureaus say. In this case, the OP has a pile of open accounts, all opened within the last 17 months. Account age stats aren't going to change by much, either now or in the future, if a handful of those accounts are removed.

[Anonymous]

FICO likes to see 5 credit cards for maximum scoring benefit as long as all 5+ are 2 years old each or more.  Don't go below 5 unless there's a financial reason such as high annual fees not offset by rewards.

You can do the math yourself quite easily by going over statements, setting a budget based on your prior 12 months of spending, and calculating your maximum rewards options going forward on your budget.

If you don't have a written budget you stick to, there's no advice possible to give because folks who spend without a budget aren't able to maximum rewards planning ahead of time.

[Np1791]

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@HeavenOhio wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:
Keep them unless you're doing it because of annual fees, the terms, or something like bad customer service.

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Of if they've become a pain to manage. Or on rare occasions, if you feel you need to trim your overall limits.

Note that VantageScore does include closed accounts just like FICO. It's Credit Karma's front end software that ignores them. Sites that provide FICO scores could potentially break that information in the same way. And there are VantageScore sites that report account age stats correctly.

I'm not sure what you mean by closed accounts supressing your AAoA for 15 years. Closed accounts could drop from one's report tomorrow, but they're likely to remain on your report for "up to 10 years," as the bureaus say. In this case, the OP has a pile of open accounts, all opened within the last 17 months. Account age stats aren't going to change by much, either now or in the future, if a handful of those accounts are removed.

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I will be honest I'm on the fense on keeping them open or not. It has become a pain to manage them and to make matters worse I found some unauthorized charges on one of my accounts which was taken care of by capital one but still concerning. Originally I was looking at only having three cards.

Amex Blue Cash Preferred-11,000(I would rearrange my limits)

Citi Costco-8,500

Discover IT-7,000

Those were the accounts I was thinking of keeping. It seems like the information on how many accounts people need for the optimum score seems to vary a lot. I have heard 3 accounts in the past then 4 and 5. I figure those three credit cards and my two auto loans should be enough to give me a nice score with age right? 

[HeavenOhio]

Three cards are necessary to have less than half of your revolving accounts reporting a positive balance. Some say that five improves the situation by assigning you to a scorecard that gives you the potential for a higher score.

I'd suggest keeping more than one MasterCard/Visa simply because of the acceptance rate. After that, look at things like limits, rewards, lack of foreign transaction fees, or whatever features please you.

You definitely have to monitor for fraud. For every card that offers them, I have alerts set up on my mobile devices for every transaction. (Barclays doesn't offer these alerts.) I caught fraudulent charges that way a couple of months ago. I also roll through my card accounts online for a quick peek almost every day. Generally, it takes me about two minutes to check six cards with four banks, and I think I could probably handle doing that with about 10 cards or so (not that I necessarily want that many ).

[Np1791]

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@HeavenOhio wrote:

Three cards are necessary to have less than half of your revolving accounts reporting a positive balance. Some say that five improves the situation by assigning you to a scorecard that gives you the potential for a higher score.

I'd suggest keeping more than one MasterCard/Visa simply because of the acceptance rate. After that, look at things like limits, rewards, lack of foreign transaction fees, or whatever features please you.

You definitely have to monitor for fraud. For every card that offers them, I have alerts set up on my mobile devices for every transaction. (Barclays doesn't offer these alerts.) I caught fraudulent charges that way a couple of months ago. I also roll through my card accounts online for a quick peek almost every day. Generally, it takes me about two minutes to check six cards with four banks, and I think I could probably handle doing that with about 10 cards or so (not that I necessarily want that many ).

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Looking at my cards down below, which ones would you decide to keep if 4/5 was necessary. Also what do you mean by me getting a scorecard with potential for a higher score?

[SouthJamaica]

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@Np1791 wrote:

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@HeavenOhio wrote:

---

@Anonymous wrote:
Keep them unless you're doing it because of annual fees, the terms, or something like bad customer service.

---

Of if they've become a pain to manage. Or on rare occasions, if you feel you need to trim your overall limits.

Note that VantageScore does include closed accounts just like FICO. It's Credit Karma's front end software that ignores them. Sites that provide FICO scores could potentially break that information in the same way. And there are VantageScore sites that report account age stats correctly.

I'm not sure what you mean by closed accounts supressing your AAoA for 15 years. Closed accounts could drop from one's report tomorrow, but they're likely to remain on your report for "up to 10 years," as the bureaus say. In this case, the OP has a pile of open accounts, all opened within the last 17 months. Account age stats aren't going to change by much, either now or in the future, if a handful of those accounts are removed.

---

I will be honest I'm on the fense on keeping them open or not. It has become a pain to manage them and to make matters worse I found some unauthorized charges on one of my accounts which was taken care of by capital one but still concerning. Originally I was looking at only having three cards.

Amex Blue Cash Preferred-11,000(I would rearrange my limits)

Citi Costco-8,500

Discover IT-7,000

Those were the accounts I was thinking of keeping. It seems like the information on how many accounts people need for the optimum score seems to vary a lot. I have heard 3 accounts in the past then 4 and 5. I figure those three credit cards and my two auto loans should be enough to give me a nice score with age right? 

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I don't think the unauthorized charge possibility is a good reason to close an account.

1. You can set up conservative email alerts, so that you would be notified if the card had any use.

2. A card which is not out there being used is less likely to fall prey to a skimmer or something.

[HeavenOhio]

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@Np1791 wrote:

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@HeavenOhio wrote:

Three cards are necessary to have less than half of your revolving accounts reporting a positive balance. Some say that five improves the situation by assigning you to a scorecard that gives you the potential for a higher score.

I'd suggest keeping more than one MasterCard/Visa simply because of the acceptance rate. After that, look at things like limits, rewards, lack of foreign transaction fees, or whatever features please you.

You definitely have to monitor for fraud. For every card that offers them, I have alerts set up on my mobile devices for every transaction. (Barclays doesn't offer these alerts.) I caught fraudulent charges that way a couple of months ago. I also roll through my card accounts online for a quick peek almost every day. Generally, it takes me about two minutes to check six cards with four banks, and I think I could probably handle doing that with about 10 cards or so (not that I necessarily want that many ).

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Looking at my cards down below, which ones would you decide to keep if 4/5 was necessary. Also what do you mean by me getting a scorecard with potential for a higher score?

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If I were to keep only four, I'd keep the first four cards on your list (CITI Costco, Amex BCP, Discover IT, and Chase Amazon Prime). But I'd definitely look to keep a fifth. The fifth wouldn't be Blispay because it only reports to one bureau. Although I don't see oodles of value in the card unless you're practially assured of buying a GM vehicle, I think the Buypower card edges out the two low-limit AMEX cards simply because it's a Visa/MC product.

I think what I'd do for now is knock off all the store cards unless one of them offers reward value that really benefits you. Also, maybe you can look at closing one or both of the two low-limit AMEX cards. It might be possible to transfer some of one card's limit to the other and keep that one.

I'm not the one that should be explaining scorecards, but I'll give it the good old college try, and hopefully, someone can pick up where I leave off. FICO assigns consumers to various scorecards. I think there might be eight for FICO8: five "dirty" and three "clean." Dirty scorecards would include those who have any kind of derogs on their reports (late payments, charge-offs, etc.) The highest potential score for someone on a dirty scorecard is in the 760-ish range. Besides dirty vs. clean, from what I understand, other factors used to assign people to scorecards include account age (oldest/youngest) and number of accounts.

[Anonymous]

Keep them both. Why get rid of any unless you have a ton of cards. Which you didn’t say? Do you shop a lot on Amazon? If not no reason to have it. Need more info before being able to recommend.

[Np1791]

Alright everybody I have decided what I will do. I will be keeping five credit cards along with my two auto loans.

Amex BCP-11,000

Citi-8,500

Discover-7,000

Ashley Furniture-7,500

CareCredit-12,000