No. I have many more closed than open accounts on my laundry list of a credit report. You know the bad stuff - late payments and worse.

I would add that all this would not be possible without the full-on cooperation and consent of the cc issuers - no credit manager has ever told me to stop acquiring more accounts - so Thank You, Citi, Chase, and BofA, and continued success to your cc divisions.

Do they ever ask why you want so many cards?

Yes, and I always say "for the sign-up bonus miles!" and they always answer "Of course you do. It's a great offer." And I say "Straight-up, it sure is. I love Chase, and am fully addicted to opening new accounts as often as possible. Would you tell me again how often I may apply for a new account with you?" And so it goes. Straight up.

2 years for inquiries
7 years for derogatories
10 years for bankruptcies
No limit on neutrals or positives
And before someone asks that means open and closed accounts.

Are there then better or worse ways to close an account? i.e. are there any benefits to merging with another line as opposed to just closing? (ignoring credit line increases) or is that basically the same thing?

Hi, travelwave! Go to the MilesBuzz forum, first page. Read the "21000 UA Miles for Chase Credit Card" thread started by SteamEngine. Easy to find. Your answers are in there!

Quite honestly I don't think you have a Chairman Card so you will not be able to do anything with merging. There is only one way for you to close an account and that is to close it. If you could merge it would still be closed. I am beginning to agree this thread should be locked. The title will cause ft spies to read and maybe take away some of the benefits enjoyed by ft'ers. Change the title to eliminate the word churn and it might be ok.

amen

amen

I've never had any problem with reallocation/merging, i.e. taking the credit line from an account I'm about to close and adding it to another before closing it. This is with Citi and Chase (not Chairman cards).

I don't think there's anything "taboo" about this... I think most issuers explicitly allow it for customers in good standing (Amex even lets you do it on their website). Not sure why this needs to be kept hush-hush?

Going to respectfully disagree here. I've seen folks who are young, of modest income, and have scores around 700 churn with great success (and keep their scores around 700). In fact, sometimes the large number of accounts seems to be beneficial for someone young because it adds a lot of positive history to an otherwise thin credit file. The inquiries don't really make a lot of difference after the first few, and if you plan a bit, you can get to know which issuers pull which bureaus in your area and space out your apps accordingly. FICO weighs inquiries much less heavily after 6 months and not at all after 12 months, so if you go with a ~3-month schedule, the older inquiries will roll off the scoring model as the new ones are added.

The most important thing is never to miss any payments. Having a lot of accounts with different due dates can be like playing with fire in this regard.

You can also check your credit report. The day of the inquiry is usually the day of approval/denial.

With Citi it's almost always the same day (they usually pull the report "while you wait" after you submit the app).
With Chase it's generally the following day (not sure why - just takes them time to get info from one system to another I guess).
With Juniper it always seems to be pulled "while you wait," but if it goes into manual review, you can check http://www.applicationstatus.com and they'll tell you the date of your approval.

This is only true if you get "instant" approval (or denial). If your app needs further underwriting it will not be the case since the credit pull in computer generated at the time you sbumit the app.

Currently Chase is 3+ weeks out on underwriting apps that aren't auto approved. Not sure about Citi, BofA, Juniper or Amex.

This is true, but I think the date they begin processing the application is the determinant in spacing out the apps. I've noticed Citi and Chase's "reference numbers" are always built around the date of the original pull (day of app with Citi, business day following with Chase). I may be wrong, though.