Too Many Credit Cards?

[Cory]

Thank you so much guys. But the cards with the annual fee I will close them.

Cory

[Anonymous]

If you open new credit cards, will they intially lower your credit score before they affect them positively...assuming that you pay them off each time you use them and you use them sparingly?

[Anonymous]

I'll offer a different viewpoint to the blanket statement that opening a new tradeline will initially lower your score. Every person is different and it will depend on many other factors. I opened a BofA Platinum when my only other tradeline was a Cap One auto loan. Everything else had been closed, paid, settled, and/or negotiated as part of a 4 year effort to clean house, so I was seriously lacking tradelines. My score went up over 20 points across the board for adding a brand new account. It helped that BofA threw in a month of paymeny history on the first reporting, when I had only had the card a few weeks.  I love this board but there is a lot of "doing this will equal this result", and much of it is in opposition to my own experience. Not that anyone is wrong. The reporting formula doesn't always act predictably.

[Anonymous]

I don't know about how many accounts you should have open with 0 balances, but I do know that maintaining a zero balance isn't necessarily good.  You need to show you can manage credit wisely.  Unfortunately, that means maintaining LOW balances.  I've been told keeping your util on the CC's to under 10% is great.  Under 7% is better.

Sadly, that means on a $300 limit card, you should keep a revolving balance of around $20 or so. Charge, pay, charge, pay....  it's a merry-go-round!

[Anonymous]

I just opened a few new accounts 2 of which are reporting with a bonus month payments, I had basically no change in FICO scores.  I expected a drop with the additional inquiries but nothing, so i  came to the conclusion that payment history offset any other activity. Now as far as the Fako scores my EQ score went up 7 points today after a paid collection posted, FICO stayed the same. Again i thought i would take a hit for paying a collection.