Thread: Is Five cards Too Many?

I carry five credit cards around in my wallet- AMEX Blue, Citi Professional, Discover More, Chase Freedom Visa, and BP Visa.

All get used at one time or another for a specific purpose.

Is five cards excessive to carry in your wallet?

I have two more at home in the sockdrawer.

It's good to have 5 or more cards in use all the time - usage, not going anywhere close to your limits and prompt timely payments builds up credit scores.

Thanks, but is it stupid to carry all of these cards (5) around with you daily?

Originally Posted by Michael

Thanks, but is it stupid to carry all of these cards (5) around with you daily?

Well - not really stupid, but unsafe. If you lose your wallet or some pickpocket gets it you will have one major league headache with possible stolen/used by others issues to deal with.

I recommend only carrying around one or two. For me one is a gas rebate credit card and the other is a card that gives the highest rebate on everything else. Then I have a few others that I take out and use every few months so they keep getting reported but I don't carry them in my wallet.

Part of your credit history is how long you've had accounts open so if a card has no annual fee never close it. Just use it once in a while so it keeps getting reported to the bureaus.

The thing about Ben Stein - don't do that because he carries all of his on him! I saw the video clip and he had a pocketbook that was 2 inches thick with credit cards. That wouldn't be recommended.

I know FICO claims there's no "magic number" of cards to have but a lot of things I've seen said that around 7 is a good number... Probably any number more than just a couple is good.

Like you guys said though the most important thing is how you treat your cards... not how many you have....

I remember seeing most folks in America have 5 to 10 credit cards. The new Fico scoring that started this year is supposed to be more flexible with letting folks open up more cards and have more cards. They realized that is how it is now -we have a lot of cards.

You guys are right there's no set number but as far as averages the typical American has 11 lines of credit but that number includes a mortgage or car payment too.

What would you say out of those 11 maybe 2 or 3 are fixed? Then the rest would be credit cards.