Does it hurt your credit report the more credit cards you have, even if you dont use most of them?

Question

I have about 5, but only really use 1. Should I cancel the others, or does it not affect anything if I have them?

Answer 1

Don't cancel your cards. A large portion of your credit score is based on the percentage of revolving credit available. In english it is the percentage between your credit limit and your balances. i.e If your credit limit is $100 and your balance is $10, your percentage available is 90%, credit score goes up, on the other hand if your limit is $100 and your balance is $90, now you only have 10% available, credit score goes down. It, however does not help you if you do not use the cards, it doesnt hurt, either. My recommendation would be to randomly use the other cards to keep their status active, but pay the balances off at the end of the month to avoid accrueing finance charges. But don't close them, that will actually pull your score down.
---I've been a Finance Manager for 12 years.

Answer 2

It depends on wether you are going to be looking to buy a car or other big purchase as well as the available credit limits. If they all have low limits cancel the others and apply for an increase in the credit limit on the card you use...a couple of things to keep in mind 1) if you have a credit card with say a limit of $1000 but the highest balance you have ever had at one time was $300 ypur high credit on a credit report will show $300 2) if you are going to be making a large puchace, when a bank is deciding how much of a loan you can afford they look at your credit card as if they are maxed out (even if they have zero balances) to determine your debt to income ratio

Answer 3

You should have at least a few, 2-3. I know some with 5-10. It doesn't matter, as long as you use them wisely and keep low balances. The FICO scoring model doesn't take the number into effect, only the balances and age. It hurts your FICO score to not have any, of course. "Lack of revolving charge accounts" is one of the main reasons FICO gives for pulling your score down if you don't have at least 1.

Answer 4

5 is reasonable..... they look at how much debt you could incur with what you have when seting limits and determining score. What you want to do is kind of use all of them once in a while and pay promtly so you will have multiple references. You have to use credit to get credit. But on another note if you have any store specific cards like Kohls or something get rid of them. They are bad on so many levels.

Answer 5

Don't cancel, keep the utilization down and let your account age. Fico takes into account the length of your credit history.

Answer 6

Listen to Jemmy. I think she's got you on the right track.

Answer 7

listen to jemmy - i look at bureaus all day -