So I saw this article on the front page of Yahoo and first thing that popped into my head was FlyerTalk. lol.

http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-bud...-creditreports

Am here I am with a measly $100k. :lol:

Alot of us here on FT may have alot more than 200-300K total credit lines. Especially FTers that own businesses. We just don't brag about how much total credit lines we have. Just the rewards earned.

We get the cards for the large signup bonuses. Why not? ^

We have some cards that we've kept a long time (for us, a few old retail cards such as Sears, Penny's & Macy's and for me, a couple of old credit union non rewards cards) for credit history. We do use the retail cards when they offer us nice discounts for using their cards, otherwise we use the rewards based cards for our purchases.

There was a time we used our checkbook for buying everything. Now we use the cards and get rewarded. Of course, we always pay the statement balance every month so no interest charges. ^

Ditto that, 300K is hardly exceptional.

"he's even got an American Express that has no limit"

LMAO!

I did get one thing of value from the article:

First time I've ever seen them admit that in public - usually, when a Fair Isaac/myfico.com/whatever person is quoted, they say something like "lower is better... less than 50% is good..."

Otherwise, there isn't much solid advice. If I'm reading between the lines correctly, it sounds like he's saying he carries a small balance here or there, to get the rewards. And he doesn't necessarily pre-plan his spending, just looks back over his statements to figure out where the money went.

BZZT. He's almost certainly paying more in interest and overspending than he's earning.

Unimpressed.

Idiot.

Well it was free at least:

"He's got a Visa Black Card, a new elite card with concierge service, access to airport lounges, cash-back rewards or airfare on any airline with no blackouts. He's assessing it for a year to determine if he'll use the rewards programs enough to cover the cost of the $495 annual fee, but he got the fee waived to do so".

Don't need to actually cary a balance. You need to let you cycle close with some outstaning balance. This is a good advice to people who pay off the bill before cycle closes and it always show sup as ZERO dollars -- that is not as good as say you billl closes and you have a $1,000 bill, and then you pay it off within 21 days.

Carrying a balance only helps credit card companies with 20% annual fee, but closing each cycle with a balance helps your utilization score, it is a fine distinction that is lost on a lot of people. IMHO

Best,

PedroNY

"Even though I have all those outstanding potential balances, I don't have many outstanding balances."

Hearing that from my financial consultant would be troubling to me. To the point where I wouldn't want to hear any other financial advice from the same person.

Also, "...your score gets dinged each time it's checked for new credit. Applying for too much credit at once has creditors worried that you're in a financial bind and getting ready to rely on credit you might not pay back. New accounts opened also impact your score by about 10% for much of the same reason. "Taking on new credit has shown to indicate a higher level of risk," Paperno said. "People who go into default tend to have added new credit more recent than those who haven't..."

While, this is true, it's only half of the picture. When a new credit line becomes available to you, it also decreases your UR, which offsets some of the "dings" mentioned in the article. Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I feel that this FICO thing is like some sort of vodoo formula. It seems capricious and arbitrary as in it works completely differently from one provider to another. I've seen my scores plummeted by more than 30 points after some of my CC binges, yet I've seen them gaining almost as many after others.

Agreed with the points above, but when did anyone take Yahoo's tabloid-style news seriously?

Hey, Yahoo has some good stuff from time to time.

What he's done in 5 years....

I've done in 3.

And I'm 29 years old.

Love FT!

I thought he got one credit card with $300k limit. 25 cards with combined $300k limit is not much with FTers.

It's incredibly foolish of him to provide all this financial detail. He is a prime target for identity theft, or for any hacker who thinks he needs to be taken down a peg or two. Just reading the first few paragraphs lets a villain know that he's target worthy, that there is $300k in credit to be taken advantage of, his home town, his company name, his occupation, his fico score, and the article even lets us know some of the cards he has. Also, I'll bet that if suspicious charges start appearing on one of his 25 Visa cards, he might not even notice.

There's over a 1000 comments on that article and I'm sure Yahoo news is widely circulated enough for somebody to get some evil thoughts in his head.

Obviously the risk is there, but given that he has provided very personal details I can't imagine that he is not keeping track of all of these incredibly closely. I have about the same number of cards and it usually isn't that difficult to use a simple Excel spreadsheet or some other paid monitoring service to be alerted for unusual activity, especially if you do it on a regular basis. Given that he is a financial advisor of some sort, he could possibly be paid by his clients to monitor hundreds of their accounts too.

I think I remember seeing a commercial on TV sometime back where the guy says "My name is xxx and my social is yyy", and my identity is secure. The more people know your identity, in general (but not always) the less likely it is to be stolen. A few year ago, I charged my card at a restaurant in a foreign country and lo and behold a few months later I get a call from my credit card company telling me that someone is trying to charge the card again for $900. I had the card with me but they retained my number at the restaurant. In my multi-decade credit history, this is the only incident of the kind that has occurred, and the card company declined the charge. Just be careful to keep track of all your cards and you will minimize the risk - though you can never eliminate it completely.