Originally Posted by
edealinfo12345
If you have 30 cards and Slate is not the oldest, I recommend that you cancel all you Chase cards except for the CSR, which as you admit is the only Chase card you use. With 30 cards, canceling your portfolio of Chase cards will have little effect on your credit score because your available credit on all your other cards must still be high (and credit utilization low). You need to make your life less complicated. Keep things SIMPLE.
What do you think is better? A FICO score of 800 with just 5 credit cards or the identical score with 25 cards?
Having multiple credit cards is certainly not very hard - most of them are zero maintenance. All of them were opened for a reason - the only thing I have not done is to prune them to prepare myself for new cards from a single issuer as that was never an issue in the past. I have never been denied a credit card in the last 10 years.
I personally place a great value on diversity and texture of credit. I have cards from all major issuers (plus USAA) and a bunch of great Credit Unions like Penfed and Nave Fed. I have a bunch of business cards that don't show up on my report and that enables me to run up large balances and pay them off without any impact on my credit. Is 30 the right number? Who knows. But I am not sure 5 can give you adequate coverage in case of adverse action from one or two issuers especially since the big banks act in tandem as seen in 2008.
I do agree with you about cancelling Chase cards that I don't use since that allows me to wait for the next juicy card and get approved without too much hassle.