@wmarat wrote:
@visorboy1974 wrote:
@flyingmd wrote:
Personally, I think too many cards is an invitation to financial disaster. WRONGI wouldn't say it's the number of cards as much as it is the amount of credit. WRONG
lol, don't hold back there.
If someone isn't financially disciplined, I agree that having lots of cards/ lots of available credit can be risky. It's like sending a dieter into a chocolate factory. And this is something that should be acknowledged frequently on this board, because we do see people who went overboard and are paying the price.
But if you're not tempted to buy things that you can't pay off right away, lots of cards/ lots of credit are just that, lots. To me it has become a bit of a PITA to keep track of my 8 or 10 or whatever it is, but I haven't come up with any particular reason to close them. I just use 3 or 4 at a time for most of my financial business and air the others out every now and again.
In terms of scoring, 3 cards seems to be the magic number, unless you have lots of open loans, in which case you might "need" more to avoid the "too many accounts with balances" ding.
In terms of real-life usage, 2 is an absolute minimum, and 3 or 4 is better, because you never know when the CCC will go nuts on you and reduce your CL or close you out, or a card processing network will go down, or there's a screw-up in your payment and you can't use your card until it's untangled or whatever. That's when you don't want to have only BofA, or only AmEx, or only VISA's, or whatever.
In terms of rewards, evaluate your use of money and see what cards can pay you back some of your hard-earned cash, and go with those. And realize that just about the time you have the perfect collection of rewards cards, they'll start changing the rewards. 
so would it be advantagous to have say - a MC, AMEX, Visa, Discover group all from different banks so that if one bank got upset, you could depend on the others? Or do y'all have multiple MC, Visa ,etc rather than a spread of different types?
How many cards actually get carried around every day? Or do you take the one with the reward you want (ie, getting gas? get the gas CC)
Starting Score: 799
I don't think having to many cards is a problem if you're not using them to supplement your income..if you spend more than you can afford, you can get into trouble with one or two cards. I personally have two HSBC cards ( Gold Mastcd. Plat Visa ) and two first Premier ( also Gold & Platinum Visa ), along with Credit one Plat. from my rebuilding stage. These cards see minimal activity but their my oldest TLs and have some decent balances. My goto cards are my Cap 1 Rewards, my Costco Amex, and my Walmart Discover...I can easily obtain more TLs but I'm kinda happy with what I have..
