I just had a credit card limit drop $18,500!
If I had 2 or 3 cards, that would have been devastating.
Every one is different.
Do what you are comfortable with.
I was interested in getting higher cash back primarily. Before I had just the BoA Cash Rewards which got me 3% on gas or online shopping, 2% for Walmart, and 1% everything else. That served me plenty well.
Now I have:
- BoA Cash Rewards: 3.3% online shopping, 2.2% Walmart
- US Bank Altitude Go: 4% food, 2% streaming services, $15 annual credit for streaming (basically 2 free months Youtube Premium)
- Wells Fargo Propel: 3% streaming, gas, and travel
- Blue Cash Everyday: 3% grocery
- PenFed Power Cash Rewards: 2% everything else
- Chase Sapphire Preferred: nothing better than above, but $800 SUB - $95 AF
The utilization points are also important and they have long term scoring benefits. Plus it diversifies me from having everything with one bank (checking, saving, and CC all with BoA prior). Now I'm spread across 6 banks for credit card exposure and have another two banks with checking accounts to generate interest and collect another easy SUB there.
@Loquat wrote:Liken it to how folks have big houses with only a couple of folks living there. I drive a gas guzzling 6.2L Super Charged V8 and I almost always ride by myself as we take the wife's gas guzzling V8 SUV when we're together and we have no kids or pets.
I smell a Hellcat!
as of 1/1/23
@Loquat wrote:
@ccquest wrote:I was interested in getting higher cash back primarily. Before I had just the BoA Cash Rewards which got me 3% on gas or online shopping, 2% for Walmart, and 1% everything else. That served me plenty well.
Now I have:
- BoA Cash Rewards: 3.3% online shopping, 2.2% Walmart
- US Bank Altitude Go: 4% food, 2% streaming services, $15 annual credit for streaming (basically 2 free months Youtube Premium)
- Wells Fargo Propel: 3% streaming, gas, and travel
- Blue Cash Everyday: 3% grocery
- PenFed Power Cash Rewards: 2% everything else
- Chase Sapphire Preferred: nothing better than above, but $800 SUB - $95 AF
The utilization points are also important and they have long term scoring benefits. Plus it diversifies me from having everything with one bank (checking, saving, and CC all with BoA prior). Now I'm spread across 6 banks for credit card exposure and have another two banks with checking accounts to generate interest and collect another easy SUB there.
@Loquat wrote:Liken it to how folks have big houses with only a couple of folks living there. I drive a gas guzzling 6.2L Super Charged V8 and I almost always ride by myself as we take the wife's gas guzzling V8 SUV when we're together and we have no kids or pets.
I smell a Hellcat!
@ccquest You'd be right. LOL! I absolutely love my car. We don't have kids but I think of my cars as my babies, hahahaha. Even when I got my Hellcat I couldn't bring myself to getting rid of my previous car so now I have 2 Chargers, my Hellcat and my '18 392 Scat Pack.
Can't blame you @Loquat - muscle has never been my type of car personally, but a neighbor has a Hellkitty Charger and I went for a ride with him. Holy hell does that thing pull. I'd be in jail in a matter of hours. I completely understand the appeal and the only thing I could see in greater quantity than the big grins would be the dollars spent on rear tires 
I did it for the challege. Now, I don't care.
For myself.
I am a catagory spender to earn rewards. My goal is to earn as much free money as I can by using my cards for what I'd normally spend on bills. gas. groceries etc. I spend approx $700 a month on subscribe and save items on Amazon each month. That's $35 free every month alone on one card because I pay my bill off before it posts. Same goes for other spend, Amex is giving me $20 a month in savings on cell phone, streaming services etc. I do have have multiple cards but again each one is used for a specific purpose and earns me cash back or points. My limits are high because, well, when I applied for the cards they gave me 20-30k lines. I didn't ask for them, but I'm sure not going to tell them no either lol.
As long as you are able to manage your spend and not spend more than you can afford to pay, the limits don't matter so much as long as they are able to cover the amount of monthly spend you use on those particular cards but..... I will admit, there is a small part of me who does feel a bit of pride when I look at my CCs and see those 30+k limits on some of my cards, because back a few years ago, I would have never imagined myself ever seeing those types of credit lines but it also shows that the hard work I put in to working on my credit has paid off and in 5 years, I have went from low 600 scores to 825+ scores across the board.
I don't have lots of high-limit cards, but here's why I'd like to have more.
- I put north of $10k in spend on my cards every month (sometimes even $15k), while I have only $26k in available limits. That means I have to carefully and aggressively pay each of them down before each statement cuts, or else my report shows ridiculously high utilization and my scores tank. Having higher limits would reduce that burden.
- Sometimes I don't get reimbursed for work expenses in time before a statement cuts, and I have no choice but to let it report a huge balance.
- Sometimes I have to make multiple payments on a card each month if the card has a lower limit than I spend on it in a month. It would be nice to only have to make 1 payment a month.
- The more cards I have, and the earlier I get them, the less impact opening another new account will have on my average account age.
- There are still more cashback/rewards cards I want and don't have yet.
Total Loan Balance: $43k / $65k
Total SL: $78k
It's a hobby, it's a game, it's giving me a few extra pennies.
And honest, the utilization can be important. I had an off cycle reporting that jolted my utilization high and dropped my score by a lot and it hurt me as I was getting a loan at the time. It wasn't too terrible (3.2% vs 2.9%), but over the long haul, it might've been annoying.
I do category spend, CC benefits, and I like SUBs. That makes for a lot of cards (to get the cat spend right), but I don't think it's a bad thing as long as I only spend the money I have.
I should also add that the main reason I am trying to get my limits up is that the average CL is a factor in CBIS scores... so I'm just trying to make sure they balance out that 1200CL that Chase thinks I need on my Freedom 