Originally Posted by SANman

By holding on to cards you don't use but still have a credit limit assigned to them, doesn't that have the potential of dinging your score? It's a fine line between total access to credit, your history and, the big one, percentage of credit in use.

If you hold 4 cards with $25,000 limits, that is $100,000 credit line. Your credit score will be affected somewhat just by having those lines of credit open. Mortgage companies are very concerned about this when qualifying for a mortgage.

The biggest no-no though is to never go over 50% of the credit limit on the account. You will get dinged a bit for that.