how many is too many?????

[drkaje]

Bigger credit lines are cool but my understanding is that they're determined by history of on time payment, income, score and so on. A CL doesn't have to be a million bucks to meet my daily spending needs. I have about $40K in available credit and that's more than enough and will likely cut that by more than half once everything's paid off.

[Anonymous]

I have 5, and if I were to be perfectly honest, I'd say I have at LEAST 2 too many.

I'm cutting out the BoA card and if it weren't because of the awesome bonuses I get from the Freedom/Checking combo, I'd cut that one out as well and stay with Discover, AMEX, and Hyatt Visa.

As of next year, looks like I'll be at 4, and still think it's too many. I seriously don't get how people can have over 15, keep track and build up enough rewards/cashback with them.

[Anonymous]

I know people with 20+ cards.  They basically don't carry them.  Most if not all do not have annual fees.  Even with lots of inquiries, they rock high 700's in credit score.  It is a lot of work to set up and they pay more attention to credit than the average person.  Its basically an ideal credit file as they build lots of AAoA and huge total credit line.  On the positive side for them, they never have to worry about balances reporting on their credit cards or applying for some random card to get a bonus or discount.  New inquires or new credit lines hardly move their scores at all given their huge existing base of credit.

As for credit line sizes, one previous poster listed the factors.  He is correct.  But the attitude was a most passive one.  The fact is that some credit grantors are slow or never do so and some are more generous.  Taking an active attitude on getting your credit lines up will result in more available credit faster.  For example, NFCU is known to be generous with CL.  Getting a much higher CL with one card usually "encourages" the others to increase.  Certain capital one starter cards never go up.  For example, my buddy has a capital one starter card that got moved to $500 from $250 fairly quickly, but never since then.  He has a card he got afterwards from cap. one that started at $1k and is now at 10k even though it is newer than his original cap one card.  There are many more examples.