Reducing credit is fun

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

At this point Im over rewards/bonus chasing, tired of having cards I dont use and therefore dont need. Should have passed on AARP but too late now.

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Good attitude!    

I think that once you have a stable "good" score, and you are going for cashback rewards rather than travel, it's good to do an analysis over how much extra you are making over say putting everything on a much smaller set of cards (say a general 2% and one other) and then determine whether the extra is worth the work of choosing withich to use, monitoring the accounts etc.       

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I will be closing my Barclay's Rewards MC this week as soon as my payment posts.  I will also be closing Home Depot and seriously considering closing my TR Visa and Overstock but not certain just yet.

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Sounds good, georgia. It's good to think it over for a period of time before closing also. I usually think it over for a few weeks and lay out in writing the pros/cons of closing specific cards.

[Gunnar419]

I love this thread! Too often, every time the subject of reducing our number of cards arises, threads turn into a debate on "why you should never close cards except those with AF or rebuilder cards." Of course there are lots of good reasons to reduce the size of your cc portfolio and those who want to do it shouldn't always be second guessed and debated.

So YAY for this thread.

I don't have a huge number of cards, but I still want to reduce my portfolio this year because I'm not a huge credit user, because I'm uncomfortable with total CLs outstripping my income by more than 2X  and because even my six cards could be a PITA to manage and track.

So I closed my Amex Costco TE because I didn't want to sit around and wait for it to turn into a Citi Visa card (don't care for Citi and don't need another Visa). I was originally hoping Amex would PC the card into something else but every indication is that's not going to happen. So, with regret, goodbye TE card. I had already moved most of its CL to my other Amex card so it wasn't a big loss of CL.

Next up is Chase Freedom because it doesn't do anything for me that Discover can't do better and because it's my lowest CL. I'm waiting a while on that closure, though, because right now I'm carrying some balances and I want to reduce them before getting rid of anything else.

When 2016 ends, though, I'll be down to four cards, one from each network, all with good cashback.

[Anonymous]

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@icyhot wrote:
Wait, what's wrong with DSNB? I know the reporting thing is weird but did I miss something

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Haha...faulty website, lack of knowledgeable reps, inability to respond to SMs in a reasonable time frame. The list just goes on and on and on.

Telling my my accounts were closed when they really weren't.

[Anonymous]

Walmart - Stuck at $400. Not going up.
CareCredit - Not useful at its current limit. Cutting down on Synchrony cards
Chase Freedom - Will probably move the limit to a future CSP app and use Discover as the cash back card.

[icyhot]

I ended up closing my Hilton today. I'm debating if I want to totally CLOSE Macy's or reduce the limit to like $500 just to get discounts when I can

[Anonymous]

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@icyhot wrote:
I ended up closing my Hilton today. I'm debating if I want to totally CLOSE Macy's or reduce the limit to like $500 just to get discounts when I can

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Best of luck with whatever you decide to do. It could be a process.

[Anonymous]

I also think it helps to have a purpose and goal in reducing overall credit as well as just specific cards, and looking at the big picture. Sometimes people will close cards, then open others, and still have too much overall credit in the eyes of some lenders. So having an overall reduction goal helps.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I also think it helps to have a purpose and goal in reducing overall credit as well as just specific cards, and looking at the big picture. Sometimes people will close cards, then open others, and still have too much overall credit in the eyes of some lenders. So having an overall reduction goal helps.

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And once the reduction target is readched,  people then need to stop chasing CLIs, which appears to be against the spirit of a lot of this forum!

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

I also think it helps to have a purpose and goal in reducing overall credit as well as just specific cards, and looking at the big picture. Sometimes people will close cards, then open others, and still have too much overall credit in the eyes of some lenders. So having an overall reduction goal helps.

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And once the reduction target is readched,  people then need to stop chasing CLIs, which appears to be against the spirit of a lot of this forum!

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I think both are individual decisions that people need to make for themselves, as adults