What revolvers do you have currently, and what are their dates opened and limits? My personal inclination is not to open accounts just for future score benefits, but I also somewhat dislike managing accounts and wouldn't want more than a few. If you have no intention of taking out any long term loans in the future, then about the only reason to try to get a future score boost from more revolvers would be to get better terms on yet more revolvers. If you don't find you need the extra revolvers now for anything other than potential future score gains, then you also may not find a great need for even more cards down the road.
@SirMilo wrote:
@Slabenstein wrote:What revolvers do you have currently, and what are their dates opened and limits? My personal inclination is not to open accounts just for future score benefits, but I also somewhat dislike managing accounts and wouldn't want more than a few. If you have no intention of taking out any long term loans in the future, then about the only reason to try to get a future score boost from more revolvers would be to get better terms on yet more revolvers. If you don't find you need the extra revolvers now for anything other than potential future score gains, then you also may not find a great need for even more cards down the road.
Thanks for the advice. In my world, it may not really make much difference since my total SL was $4950 between 2 cards up until late 2019. I have no idea why I am now all of a sudden concerned with credit since i've never cared over the last 54 years. It probably has much to do with the extra time I have available due to the pandemic.
This is what I have open and reporting from oldest to newest.
CapOne Platinum Visa (QS rewards after PC)- opened 12/2006 SL=$1250
BBVA ClearPoints- opened 4/2016 SL=$3700
AmEx CM- opened 10/2019 SL=$10K
Chase FU- opened 10/2019 SL=$3700
Synchrony Amazon (closed)- opened 7/2019. I forgot about this one being on my reports.
I closed it after 3 payments due to Synchrony playing games with HP's and payment processing.
Since opening the last 2 revolvers, i've stopped paying for everything in cash and have started putting all of my monthly expenses on them while paying multiple times a month. It's reasonably obvious why I have a thin account and, at this point in my life, I probably shouldn't even be worrying about the minutia of my credit.
It's kind of the same thing for me. My credit history isn't quite as long, but due to the pandemic I'm currently a homemaker with no kids, and learning about the credit world is one of the things I've found to occupy my time. And it's been of some benefit to us, since I've been able to do a little bit to help my spouse with their rebuild.
You have four open revolvers and from how you describe your use it doesn't sound like you need to add any limits for util padding, so from the perspective of score optimization, you're probably fine. For score 8, 1 loan and 3 revolvers seems to what you need for a good score contrib from credit mix. (The algorithm seems to want more from that category to completely maximize it, but I have no idea what it wants. You can get a great overall score with one loan and 3 revolvers, regardless.) I don't know as much about mortgage scores. I believe @Anonymous recommends five revolvers to optimize those, but if you already own your home and aren't likely to move it may not be worth bothering about.
If you're finding credit an interesting hobby, one thing you could do is research optimizing your rewards now that you've switched your spend to your cc's. With your current cash back line-up, it looks like you have 1.5% base from several cards, 3% on dining and pharmacy purchases, and 3%/2% on your BBVA selections. So you could analyze your spend, see if there are other categories where enough is going through your cards to try to get more than 1.5%, and then research and compare what options you have among the different issuers. Like, if you got the Synch card b/c you use Amazon quite a bit, there's also the two Chase Amazon cards and Affinity CU's rewards card.