How Many Credit Cards Do You Have?

[yat]

Is anyone thinking of getting the SPG Amex yet but hasn't?  If you are you should PM me so I can refer you.  You will still get the 10k SPG for first purchase and then 15k SPG more after you spend so much in the first 6 months like normal.  Difference is that I get 5k SPG for you signing up   

Dude - I signed up this a.m.!  If you know of a way you can retroactively refer me - PM.

[steve dave]

Is anyone thinking of getting the SPG Amex yet but hasn't?  If you are you should PM me so I can refer you.  You will still get the 10k SPG for first purchase and then 15k SPG more after you spend so much in the first 6 months like normal.  Difference is that I get 5k SPG for you signing up   

Dude - I signed up this a.m.!  If you know of a way you can retroactively refer me - PM.

haha, I don't think I can.  I have to get your email and send you a link and then you refer through that link.  Thanks for being willing though!

[raquetcat]

Meet Pete D'Arruda: A man with 25 charge cards, more than a quarter of a million dollars in available credit -- and a lot of financial self-control.

D'Arruda says he has more than $300,000 in available credit thanks to some 25 Visas, Mastercards, and individual store, airlines and gas cards -- or about $12,000 per card. If he throws in his home-equity line of credit, it's close to $400,000.

"It's not taboo to have a bunch of credit cards," said D'Arruda, a personal finance consultant who has been building his credit trove for about five years. "It's about how you manage them."

The founding principal of Capital Financial Advisory Group in Cary, N.C., and author of three personal-finance books is testing the more-is-better theory of credit cards: The more cards and available credit one has, the better the credit score -- assuming, of course, the bills are paid promptly.

With a FICO credit score in the 810-815 range, it's working for him. But credit-agency experts say it's unnecessary and could create a financial maelstrom for those less diligent with their money.

"For many people they would end up with $350,000 in debt and that would not be a very good thing," said Rod Griffin, director of public education for Experian.

D'Arruda charges everything from coffee to the rent for his office space on credit cards. He prides himself on his ability to manage them all and to pay them promptly, keeping himself from falling into a debt spiral.

"I like to pay my bills on time," he said. "Even though I have all those outstanding potential balances, I don't have many outstanding balances."

What he does have, he boasts, is hundreds of thousands of miles and points, numerous discounts and even freebies from retail stores and vacation spots, waived annual fees on some credit cards and better interest rates on insurance and car and home loans. Typically, the higher the credit score, the lower the interest rate. What's more, he's got a running tally through credit-card statements on where he's spent money both personally and for business.

"I'm getting paid to have a good credit score," he said.

He's got a Disney Visa card from Chase -- with Buzz Lightyear on it that entertains his daughter Carrie -- with which he's accumulated enough points to pay for a Disney cruise this Thanksgiving. His platinum American Express card points will cover the airfare to Orlando, Fla.

Even cards with fees are a bonus for D'Arruda. 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.

"They pulled my credit score and saw that I was a good risk," he said.

Credit scores are calculated through a complicated and proprietary algorithm of measures that differ among scoring agencies. However, there are three major pieces of your credit-score picture that all follow to closely

The most important: Your bill-paying history. It will account for as much as 35% of your total score. Pay all your bills on time. Even if it's just the minimum payment, make sure that bill is marked paid on the designated date -- or sooner. D'Arruda said he sometimes makes two payments a month to keep his balances in order.

Next up is what credit-ratings agencies call the "utilization rate," or your debt-to-available-credit ratio. D'Arruda, who said his typically stands at about 10% to 15% and no more than 25%, began this credit-building experiment based on the simple notion that your credit score is mostly determined by the amount of available credit subtracted by the amount outstanding.

It's a fussier method than that, but your utilization rate is worth some 30% of your score. Creditors don't want to see the ratio over 30% and consider it an important link to your financial acumen and any lifestyle changes you may be facing.

"You don't need a lot of credit cards to have a good utilization rate," said Barry Paperno, consumer operations manager for myfico.com, the consumer arm of credit-scorer FICO. "And obtaining 25 credit cards for your score is overkill. Utilization looks at percentages more than dollars."

Consider it this way: If you have $300,000 in available credit and carried a $30,000 balance, your utilization rate is 10%; if the available credit stands at $3,000 and you charged $300, your utilization rate is the same.

What you must have are credit limits that meet your charging needs, said Steven Katz, senior director of operations for TransUnion, the credit- and information-management company. "You may need a smaller number of cards with higher limits or more cards with smaller limits to stay under that 30% utilization rate."

Don't max out one card over another either in order to keep the utilization rates under 30%, he added. If you take out a store credit card with a $5,000 limit and you charge $4,750 for a home-theater system, your utilization rate on that card will set off alarms.

"It's a good idea to try to keep the balance on each card under 30% of the limit," Katz said. "It will help guide your efforts to keep your overall credit use low."

A perfect score is near impossible to get and having credit but not using it won't get you there. That's doesn't mean that you have to carry a balance that you must then pay interest fees on each month. You just need to use the card and pay it off to maximize your credit score.

"The ideal place to be is under a 10% utilization rate but over 0%," FICO's Paperno said. "There needs to be some kind of recent activity" to activate a score.

Your credit mix and history contribute about 15% to your score. Creditors like to see how you handle revolving credit, or credit cards, and installment loans, like mortgages and car and student loans. They average the age of the accounts divided by the number of accounts. Surprisingly, income doesn't play a very significant part of the credit score.

D'Arruda had a long credit history before he started on this venture and said he was cautious about how much credit he applied for when. That's because 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."

D'Arruda admits he started collecting credit cards as a personal challenge to see how many he could get before he got cut off. The limits on each card vary, of course, and he's even got an American Express that has no limit, though he's not willing to test what that might mean.

"This is a lesson in discipline," he said. "When you get the credit card, it's like free money. You have to manage them well. It all comes down to not overspending because it's not your money."

And he said he only chooses cards that will help him with points, miles, cash back and other perks. He likes the 30% discounts he gets at Kohl's, for example, and the special sales offered only to Home Depot and Best Buy cardholders. He's a big fan of the Capital One card because it offers double miles.

His tool for limiting credit-card abuse? A metal money clip. It only holds five cards at a time, which helps him to monitor spending.

"You've got to treat it like cash," he said. "You have to pay it back and if you do it wrong, you have to pay a whole bunch more back."

[steve dave]

810-815. Pffffffffftttttt noob

[deuce]

Just called and activated my AA Visa and AA AmEx.  Verified the 75k on each with no problem. 

[steve dave]

Free rental car day with Hertz.  And, if you aren't a #1 Club Gold you get that with the annual fee waived.  Pretty great deal for a short amount of time.  I get Gold status via my office but hit them up for the 500 free points plus an adnl 100 for each rental through september.

Hertz Link
http://goldplus.hertz.com/?UID=&SID=EN_DM

Blog Link Discussing
http://boardingarea.com/blogs/milesquest/2011/06/23/one-free-weekend-day-rental-with-hertz/

[steve dave]

Just called and activated my AA Visa and AA AmEx.  Verified the 75k on each with no problem. 

 

[steve dave]

good example of FT poster intimidation.  Guy asks relevant question and is obv. a n00b, guy with only 4 posts says something trying to be helpful, guy with more posts chimes him to tell him he's a dumbass and so is everyone else on board, mod chimes in and tells them all to GTFO.  

hqly2001
 
Join Date: Mar 2011
Posts: 84
Credit card churning

Assuming that most people will cancel their card after the one year free membership is over, will this have a substantially adverse effect on their credit? I know that applying and hard pull hurts the score a bit, but closing the accounts would hurt the score due to credit availability. Does anyone know how substantial?

Any idea if it matters if you cancel 3-4 cards all at once or cancel each as the renewal approaches?
     
 Today, 5:52 am      #2
TravelFreeCoach
 
Join Date: May 2011
Posts: 4
There is an impact on your credit score when you cancel a card. Basically it shortens the length of your credit history. It's not a big factor since credit history only accounts for 10% of your credit score.

I don't think cancelling them at once or a different times makes a difference.
     
 Today, 6:52 am      #3
QL_714
 
Join Date: Sep 2009
Posts: 719
Mods should immediately close all threads related to credit questions. A hate to say it but FT is one of the most ill informed forums I have seen when it comes to this topic. It does not matter if an account is open or closed it will count towards AAoA.
     
 Today, 6:56 am      #4
philemer
Moderator: MilesBuzz & Other Credit Cards
 
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: Idaho or anywhere a good micro brew is served!!
Posts: 3,900
Please use www.creditboards.com for this type of discussion.

[Pete]

Wait, so rough ridin' beems has donated and we still have "regulars" who haven't?   

That's right.  And on the same board with a 20+ page thread on how to spend money on credit cards to rack up airline/hotel rewards.

Disgusting.

Hey fucksticks, go over the BBBS thread and throw a god damn donation down.  It's not too much to ask of each of you.

Jesus, throw a rough ridin' 5 spot down.   It's like the one rough ridin' redeeming thing we do around here.  Do it.

[steve dave]

My god, I want to party with this guy so bad.  We should invite him to pak.

http://thepointsguy.com/2011/07/air-europa-business-class-review-jfk-mad-my-very-low-expectations-were-met/

[Trim]

God damnit. Applied for chases yesterday morning. Did not get instantly approved on either. Called the reconsideration line this morning and still did not get approved instantly. Wtf? Going to call again tomorrow. Just got the continental cards a month ago so maybe that is affecting things. So mad. Also, there is a 23500 American airlines checking account out there that I plan on doing along with the 75k American Citi once I get all this Chase bs figured out.

Will calling the reconsideration line speed things up?  I want to get this thing - or know I've been "chased" away like now so I can know if I'll have the card by July 15 to buy my hoops tickets with and have the spend halfway done.

[ChiComCat]

God damnit. Applied for chases yesterday morning. Did not get instantly approved on either. Called the reconsideration line this morning and still did not get approved instantly. Wtf? Going to call again tomorrow. Just got the continental cards a month ago so maybe that is affecting things. So mad. Also, there is a 23500 American airlines checking account out there that I plan on doing along with the 75k American Citi once I get all this Chase bs figured out.

Will calling the reconsideration line speed things up?  I want to get this thing - or know I've been "chased" away like now so I can know if I'll have the card by July 15 to buy my hoops tickets with and have the spend halfway done.

Chase had me call the reconsideration line and then said they don't have me instantly approved and I'll have to wait and see.  A few days later, the new card showed up on my Chase account and a couple weeks later it arrived in the mail.

Check your Chase online, I guess is what I'm saying here...

[Dr Rick Daris]

God damnit. Applied for chases yesterday morning. Did not get instantly approved on either. Called the reconsideration line this morning and still did not get approved instantly. Wtf? Going to call again tomorrow. Just got the continental cards a month ago so maybe that is affecting things. So mad. Also, there is a 23500 American airlines checking account out there that I plan on doing along with the 75k American Citi once I get all this Chase bs figured out.

Will calling the reconsideration line speed things up?  I want to get this thing - or know I've been "chased" away like now so I can know if I'll have the card by July 15 to buy my hoops tickets with and have the spend halfway done.

Chase had me call the reconsideration line and then said they don't have me instantly approved and I'll have to wait and see.  A few days later, the new card showed up on my Chase account and a couple weeks later it arrived in the mail.

Check your Chase online, I guess is what I'm saying here...

agree. mine showed up last Thursday.

[Trim]

God damnit. Applied for chases yesterday morning. Did not get instantly approved on either. Called the reconsideration line this morning and still did not get approved instantly. Wtf? Going to call again tomorrow. Just got the continental cards a month ago so maybe that is affecting things. So mad. Also, there is a 23500 American airlines checking account out there that I plan on doing along with the 75k American Citi once I get all this Chase bs figured out.

Will calling the reconsideration line speed things up?  I want to get this thing - or know I've been "chased" away like now so I can know if I'll have the card by July 15 to buy my hoops tickets with and have the spend halfway done.

Chase had me call the reconsideration line and then said they don't have me instantly approved and I'll have to wait and see.  A few days later, the new card showed up on my Chase account and a couple weeks later it arrived in the mail.

Check your Chase online, I guess is what I'm saying here...

agree. mine showed up last Thursday.

I haven't heard anything.  It's not on my online account.  When i applied, the computer said 2 weeks.  When I called some general number last week, they said 2 weeks.  Today, they said 2 weeks.  Just wasn't sure if I needed to hear something before calling this reconsideration line or if I can call it and deal with a human who make something happen. 

[Dr Rick Daris]

God damnit. Applied for chases yesterday morning. Did not get instantly approved on either. Called the reconsideration line this morning and still did not get approved instantly. Wtf? Going to call again tomorrow. Just got the continental cards a month ago so maybe that is affecting things. So mad. Also, there is a 23500 American airlines checking account out there that I plan on doing along with the 75k American Citi once I get all this Chase bs figured out.

Will calling the reconsideration line speed things up?  I want to get this thing - or know I've been "chased" away like now so I can know if I'll have the card by July 15 to buy my hoops tickets with and have the spend halfway done.

Chase had me call the reconsideration line and then said they don't have me instantly approved and I'll have to wait and see.  A few days later, the new card showed up on my Chase account and a couple weeks later it arrived in the mail.

Check your Chase online, I guess is what I'm saying here...

agree. mine showed up last Thursday.

I haven't heard anything.  It's not on my online account.  When i applied, the computer said 2 weeks.  When I called some general number last week, they said 2 weeks.  Today, they said 2 weeks.  Just wasn't sure if I needed to hear something before calling this reconsideration line or if I can call it and deal with a human who make something happen. 

Def call the reconsideration line, deal with a human and ask them what you need to do to make this happen and soon.

[Trim]

God damnit. Applied for chases yesterday morning. Did not get instantly approved on either. Called the reconsideration line this morning and still did not get approved instantly. Wtf? Going to call again tomorrow. Just got the continental cards a month ago so maybe that is affecting things. So mad. Also, there is a 23500 American airlines checking account out there that I plan on doing along with the 75k American Citi once I get all this Chase bs figured out.

Will calling the reconsideration line speed things up?  I want to get this thing - or know I've been "chased" away like now so I can know if I'll have the card by July 15 to buy my hoops tickets with and have the spend halfway done.

Chase had me call the reconsideration line and then said they don't have me instantly approved and I'll have to wait and see.  A few days later, the new card showed up on my Chase account and a couple weeks later it arrived in the mail.

Check your Chase online, I guess is what I'm saying here...

agree. mine showed up last Thursday.

I haven't heard anything.  It's not on my online account.  When i applied, the computer said 2 weeks.  When I called some general number last week, they said 2 weeks.  Today, they said 2 weeks.  Just wasn't sure if I needed to hear something before calling this reconsideration line or if I can call it and deal with a human who make something happen. 

Def call the reconsideration line, deal with a human and ask them what you need to do to make this happen and soon.

Wow, that was incredible.  Approved and expedited to be received in 1-2 business days.

Now, about that 100K...

[Dr Rick Daris]

God damnit. Applied for chases yesterday morning. Did not get instantly approved on either. Called the reconsideration line this morning and still did not get approved instantly. Wtf? Going to call again tomorrow. Just got the continental cards a month ago so maybe that is affecting things. So mad. Also, there is a 23500 American airlines checking account out there that I plan on doing along with the 75k American Citi once I get all this Chase bs figured out.

Will calling the reconsideration line speed things up?  I want to get this thing - or know I've been "chased" away like now so I can know if I'll have the card by July 15 to buy my hoops tickets with and have the spend halfway done.

Chase had me call the reconsideration line and then said they don't have me instantly approved and I'll have to wait and see.  A few days later, the new card showed up on my Chase account and a couple weeks later it arrived in the mail.

Check your Chase online, I guess is what I'm saying here...

agree. mine showed up last Thursday.

I haven't heard anything.  It's not on my online account.  When i applied, the computer said 2 weeks.  When I called some general number last week, they said 2 weeks.  Today, they said 2 weeks.  Just wasn't sure if I needed to hear something before calling this reconsideration line or if I can call it and deal with a human who make something happen. 

Def call the reconsideration line, deal with a human and ask them what you need to do to make this happen and soon.

Wow, that was incredible.  Approved and expedited to be received in 1-2 business days.

Now, about that 100K...

you won't get it. still a good deal/card.

[Trim]

If I'm staying 5 nights at a SPG which should've cost 50K points, but I'm getting for 30K between combo'n a 5th night free and having gotten a 25% discount on points thanks to manipulating a 4-night stay last year into 4 1-night stays and getting credited up to gold and that particular reward, should I still ask for/demand a suite upgrade? 

If so, just be blunt about it because I'm rough ridin' gold, bitch, or is there a tactful way to go about that?  I mean, I've earned the points (through almost no regular earning methods) but still intuitively feel like I'd be pushing things at that point.

[Dr Rick Daris]

If I'm staying 5 nights at a SPG which should've cost 50K points, but I'm getting for 30K between combo'n a 5th night free and having gotten a 25% discount on points thanks to manipulating a 4-night stay last year into 4 1-night stays and getting credited up to gold and that particular reward, should I still ask for/demand a suite upgrade? 

If so, just be blunt about it because I'm effing gold, bitch, or is there a tactful way to go about that?  I mean, I've earned the points (through almost no regular earning methods) but still intuitively feel like I'd be pushing things at that point.

asking never hurts anyone. different hotels have different rules for this and different numbers of suites and what they're willing to do with them. i'd inquire at check in.

[Trim]

i'd inquire at check in.

just be blunt about it because I'm rough ridin' gold, bitch, or is there a tactful way to go about that?  Is it on me to bring it up in a certain manner?  I think I might have my customized SPG Gold card somewhere that sd and I discussed a dozen or so pages ago.

[Dr Rick Daris]

since you booked using points, my guess would be that they'll have your gold status info at check in. yes, its up to you to bring it up. i think its really just a crap shoot though and from what I can tell/have read, spg isn't great about suite upgrades based on status. just ask about whether you can get upgraded to a suite when you are checking in and see what happens. SD or someone else may have a dif opinion.

[yoga-like_abana]

since you booked using points, my hues would be that they'll have your gold status info at check in. yes, its up to you to bring it up. i think its really just a crappy shoot though and from what I can tell/have read, spg isn't great about suite upgrades based on status. is just ask whether you can get upgraded to a suite when you are checking in and see what happens. SD or someone else may have a did opinion.

good to know will be booking for atleast one night in san diego. also the dumbasses sent me a platinum card first and then a gold card. Im sure Im just a gold member but if I whip out the platinum pc member card will that do anything differently for me?

[Trim]

SD or someone else may have a did opinion.

Yeah, this seems right in his wheelhouse.

[steve dave]

SD or someone else may have a did opinion.

Yeah, this seems right in his wheelhouse.

it depends on availability obviously but asking nicely is your best bet.  also, helps to avoid the n00b checkin line even if the gold/plat line is super long.  i hate it when i go to checkin and it's not busy at all so nobody is even manning the gold/plat line and i have to checkin at the n00b line because it seems like they don't even consider upgrades because they are not working the high roller line.  i usually just chat them up a bit and then ask if there is any suite updgrade availability since i'm a gold/plat/whatever.   

[steve dave]

but ask early in the convo. because they don't seem to like to do any work whatsoever and if they start to check you into a room they act like it's some kind of super chore to get the room changed.