Help cleaning up my CC collection
 

Don't be fooled by my join date, I have been pretty stupid with my CC decisions until about 6 months ago ...

Short history: Didn't apply for any CC's until I graduated. Upon graduation was just able to get a couple of no-fee Cap One cards with a line of $750 each. Since then my focus was more on just increasing my credit line as I result I now have in my posession in a bunch of cards that I never use, and the rest are cards that I most recently applied for their bonuses.

I got my first 'real' card in July when my roommate told me to get in on the 100k Chase BA Avios deal. I did my first app-o-rama in August, where I applied for the SPG Personal and Biz cards, along with the Barclays US Airways card.

Waited for 3 months, and decided to do another small app since I was done meeting the spend on my amex cards -
- 2xciti AA before they disappear
- 65k Chase united offer

However Chase denied me for having too many accounts opened in 2012, and not enough cards with 2yr + history.

So I was thinking, I probably should cancel some of less used cards, mostly so that my profile looks leaner?

Here are my cards:
No Annual Fee:
AMEX Blue Cash Everyday - Date Opened: 04/2012
Capital One Platinum - Date Opened: 07/2010
Capital One some crappy no fee card - Date Opened: 10/2011
CHASE Freedom - Date Opened: 12/2011
DISCOVER - Date Opened: 10/2011
CITI Forward - 04/2012
CITI Platinum Dividend - Date Opened: 02/2012

Annual Fee Cards:
AMEX - SPG Personal and Business - Date Opened: 08/2012
BARCLAYS US Airways - Date Opened: 08/2012
CHASE BA Avios - Date Opened: 07/2012
Citi 2xAA - Date Opened: 10/2012

I was thinking of closing closing some of my no-fee cards. I know ppl don't recommend it since I can just let them be and accumulate some history, but isn't it bad if I barely use those cards? The only cards I really use are the Freedom and the Citi forward card for amazon purchases.

The cards with the annual fee, I will cancel them when renewal time comes around unless I get a good retention bonus. The Chase BA card being an exception because I need to keep it for another year to get the remaining 50k Avios.

Any suggestions?

Have you called chase reconsideration line for the denial?

I wouldn't close any no annual fee cards unless you are trading for another. Especially with your short history. It looks like the limits are low enough that they wouldn't hurt your utilization, but why not let them continue to age and improve your score. Keep the oldest one at a minimum.

Keep the cards and use them at least once every 4 months to keep them active.

I would keep the older ones as mentioned above. And I would only keep 5-6 total. More than that is just too many to keep up with. Whether you are using them or not. Close the annual fee ones as time comes. But you don't have to close everything at once either. Close a few at a time, so there is no sudden drop in total credit.

I think you're right about not closing too many too fact, but I have about 25 open credit cards, not including AU accounts, and my scores have not been affected nor have I found it to be "just too many."

I think the OP should avoid closing cards until they are at least 25 months old and if the annual fee cards have higher rewards than the fee there is no need to close them.

I'll agree with everyone else and add some references for your consideration.

It sounds like you're new to credit scoring, based on the question I quoted. Please consider carefully reading this primer on exactly what goes into a FICO score:

http://www.myfico.com/crediteducatio...yourscore.aspx

You'll notice a few things... Most importantly, this factor:

Every card stays on your report a minimum of 10 years. However, if you cancel every card after a year or two, you'll never have a credit report longer than 10-12 years.

Therefore, it is critical to keep one account open as long as possible, and preferably a few more just in case something happens to that oldest account. It's also a good idea to keep no-annual-fee accounts around anyway, as they will help balance out your average age of accounts, especially 10 years from now.

You should always charge something every 6 months to each card. So set up the less useful cards to autopay the full balance every month, then put something in your calendar every 5.5 months or so to remind you to have a day where you prepay some bills using those cards. Just $20 on each is enough.

Aside from all of this, it's anecdotally considered a good idea to keep one account open with each credit provider, to provide you a history with them in case you need a loan with them in the future.

Further, most of the cards you mentioned have some benefits you should consider using:

• Blue Cash AMEX - if you're close to a redemption threshold, might as well finish it - plus AMEX will use the age of your oldest account as the open date on new accounts you get
• Discover - great 5% quarterly bonuses lately
• Capital One cards have no foreign transaction fee
• Citi Dividend - could be canceled during a reconsideration call if you have trouble getting a Citi approval later

If you really wanted to "tidy up", I think canceling the newer CapOne card could make sense, since it doesn't really have many strong positives.

I didn't mean to imply having more than 5-6 cards affects credit in any way, cause I don't really know how that affects credit score. Only that its a hassle, at least for me to have more than that many. And the reasoning is this:

When you have that many cards you probably have to keep records or a log to make sure you use every card once every few months so that they are still active and count towards your credit score. Also the more cards you have the more accounts you have to check every month, for fraudulent activity even if you are using just 1 card on regular basis.

Just too much work for me, so I'd rather close the extra accounts after I secure the sign up bonus. You still have 5 cards to maintain good/excellent credit, and for your daily use.

Thank you all for your responses. Lots of good info!

I've decided I'm just going to close my newer cap one card. It has a paltry credit line, so closing it shouldn't have a negative effect.

I'll hold on to one no fee card from each issuer, just to make sure I have a long history with each ... now that I already have these cards. The Citi divident I'll hold on to as well in case it comes in handy on a future Citi recon call.

Thanks again!

I don't see what's the point of keeping the card at least 25 months vs just keeping it for 11-12 months. As far as I understand, a closed card will still be on OP credit report for at least another 10 years. Even after closed, the account still counts toward the average age, until it fell off his credit report which is 10 years later.