How Many Credit Cards? Another Angle ...

[ktm]

Many of us have contemplated how many credit cars one should have, or how many is too many. For many of us, credit cards make up the majority of our total credit accounts. Here is another take on this question:

CreditKarma has a "Credit factors" section under "Credit Health" when you log into your account. "TOTAL ACCOUNTS" is one of the six factors CreditKarma uses to help you evaluate your VantageScore. My rating is "Fair", which is color coded yellow, so I clicked on the "Learn more about ratings" button. The "Total Accounts ratings" dialog box pops up that says,

"Needs work: 0-10"

"Fair: 11-20"

"Excellent: 21+"

So according to CreditKarma, to have 'Excellent' credit, one needs to have 21+ credit accounts. This means total accounts - including all types of credit - not just credit cards - and closed accounts that still show on your report.

I wonder if this is actually a real number, and if so, where does this number comes from?

[FicoMike0]

I think vs

3 scores number of accounts, more is better. Fico likes accounts reporting, three seems enough 

[GZG]

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@ktm wrote:

Many of us have contemplated how many credit cars one should have, or how many is too many. For many of us, credit cards make up the majority of our total credit accounts. Here is another take on this question:

CreditKarma has a "Credit factors" section under "Credit Health" when you log into your account. "TOTAL ACCOUNTS" is one of the six factors CreditKarma uses to help you evaluate your VantageScore. My rating is "Fair", which is color coded yellow, so I clicked on the "Learn more about ratings" button. The "Total Accounts ratings" dialog box pops up that says,

"Needs work: 0-10"

"Fair: 11-20"

"Excellent: 21+"

So according to CreditKarma, to have 'Excellent' credit, one needs to have 21+ credit accounts. This means total accounts - including all types of credit - not just credit cards - and closed accounts that still show on your report.

I wonder if this is actually a real number, and if so, where does this number comes from?

---

that comes from a website that is paid when you apply through credit cards with them and when most of its visitors only have a few cards, they're heavily finacially motivated to tell people they should have 298328902 cards to have an 'excellent' amount of cards 

perhaps some part of vantage 3.0 scoring does care how many total accounts you have, but it's useless vantage 3.0 scoring 

a person should have at least 3 credit cards, with at least two different banks, and ideally at least one visa and one MC. that covers you personally and covers you from a FICO credit perspective. 

After that, you should have as many cards as you are willing to responsibly manage.

[SouthJamaica]

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@ktm wrote:

Many of us have contemplated how many credit cars one should have, or how many is too many. For many of us, credit cards make up the majority of our total credit accounts. Here is another take on this question:

CreditKarma has a "Credit factors" section under "Credit Health" when you log into your account. "TOTAL ACCOUNTS" is one of the six factors CreditKarma uses to help you evaluate your VantageScore. My rating is "Fair", which is color coded yellow, so I clicked on the "Learn more about ratings" button. The "Total Accounts ratings" dialog box pops up that says,

"Needs work: 0-10"

"Fair: 11-20"

"Excellent: 21+"

So according to CreditKarma, to have 'Excellent' credit, one needs to have 21+ credit accounts. This means total accounts - including all types of credit - not just credit cards - and closed accounts that still show on your report.

I wonder if this is actually a real number, and if so, where does this number comes from?

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No it's not real, it's a Credit Karma scam intended to provoke people into applying for more cards with their affiliate links.

3 to 5 cards is plenty.  Anything more than that won't help your credit in any way.

[JSUB]

Credit Karma? The site that would say "Try these cards to increase your million dollar credit limit to $1, 010,000"?

😂

[Gregory1776]

As said, credit karma (just delete it) is paid to recommend cards for you to apply for - and are probably paid even if you get denied for it. 

[AndySoCal]

I have 6 open accounts and 9 closed accounts my Vantage 4.0 does not show that score factor? Where did they get that number from they pulled it out of thin air .

[bs1234]

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@ktm wrote:

I wonder if this is actually a real number, and if so, where does this number comes from?

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<nerd mode on>

I can confirm 21 is a real number (and actually a positive integer).  21+ is less clear but with most reasonable assumptions that's real too.

[Thomas_Thumb]

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@ktm wrote:

Many of us have contemplated how many credit cards one should have, or how many is too many. For many of us, credit cards make up the majority of our total credit accounts. Here is another take on this question:

CreditKarma has a "Credit factors" section under "Credit Health" when you log into your account. "TOTAL ACCOUNTS" is one of the six factors CreditKarma uses to help you evaluate your VantageScore. My rating is "Fair", which is color coded yellow, so I clicked on the "Learn more about ratings" button. The "Total Accounts ratings" dialog box pops up that says,

"Needs work: 0-10"

"Fair: 11-20"

"Excellent: 21+"

So according to CreditKarma, to have 'Excellent' credit, one needs to have 21+ credit accounts. This means total accounts - including all types of credit - not just credit cards - and closed accounts that still show on your report.

I wonder if this is actually a real number, and if so, where does this number comes from?

---

Those front end rating summaries are not from VantageScore. So, they don't correlate directly to VS score.

However, both VS and Fico want to see a critical mass of accounts. The critical mass for optimal scoring is higher for VS. A total of 11 accounts (open+closed) appears to be a critical mass for VS. Fico is ok with fewer accounts but, fewest cards for an exceptional mix rating has been 7.

At one time I had 11 total accounts. However, 4 have aged off my reports.  My file is no longer thick even though it is not considered thin.

You can get top tier scores (above 800) both VS and Fico with 3-5 accounts total. Nonetheless, additional accounts can further boost score and add stability in the long run. My profile was stronger when I had 11 total accounts.

The scoring algorithms don't penalize for having too many accounts. However, they do penalize for too many accounts reporting balances.

[FicoMike0]

@bs1234 

I'm not familiar with the use of "+" , as in 21+, but it might be taken to express an element of the hyperreal extension to the reals, where R represents the reals and *R represents the hyperreals. 21+ could then represent the sun of 21 with one of the infinitesimals, which are not elements of the reals.

Keep in mind that the hyperreals are a proper subclass of the surreal numbers, which also include the transfinite ordinal numbers.

Like the reals, the hyperreals and surreals are uncountably infinite sets, one could argue, even more uncountable!