Hi, I’m a 22 years old, male, college student. I currently have 6 credit cards, all the credit cards except for one is approximately 2-3 years old. My oldest credit card is 4 years old (when I turned 18). I used to have a really good job that pays very well but now that I am in college I cannot afford buying impulsively anymore. out of the 6 credit cards, I only use 2 of them (chase & discover) for the cash back. The oldest credit card I would like to keep since it has the biggest credit limit and way lower interest rate. I would like to close the other 3 or at least 2 of them. The last time I checked my credit score was in August (704). I do not have a balance on any of the credit cards. The only debts I have is student loans but I don’t have to make payment or pay interest until 6 months after I graduate.
Sorry for the long explanation, I want to know if I have too many credit cards? Does it hurt my credit score if I keep all of them? Does it hurt my credit score if I cancel the ones I don’t use?
Please give me a good answer, thank you.
4
✅ Answers
? Favorite Answer
Keep the oldest one or the least expensive or the one with the highest credit limit or the one with the best rewards program or the one with the lowest fees. But don’t close all or most of them or you’ll see a big ding to your FICO Scores. I would close 3 of them over the course of a year instead of all at once.
You only need 2 credit cards. Anymore just makes life complicated
Keep your oldest one open for the sake of the
“Length of Credit History” which is 15% of your fico score
Closing them does reduced your overall available limits. But since you pay in full each month, it should not affect your credit score.
Let me explain:
Any time you use more than 30% of your available limit, your score starts reducing
The fico looks at each individual card and all cards combined
IF you were to be carrying balances, you would want to keep other cards that you don’t use open
In conclusion: You could have 50 open credit cards and have top scores
But.. this could hurt you (not fico wise)
A future lender may get “spooked” by the fact you have so much available credit and not offer you a loan. Remember that lenders don’t just go by a fico score – they will always look at your reports
Reports (all 3) are free once a year
Make sure you check them to make sure there are no errors
Get them at Annual Credit Report.com
Don’t be tempted to pay for the score.
You don’t need them, and it would be pretty much useless
If none of your cards have annual fees I recommend keeping your oldest credit card and the ones with the highest credit limits open. Because if you start closing cards you lose available credit and your debt to credit ratio could increase which would cause your credit score to drop. Also another factor in credit scores is the average age of your accounts and while a closed credit card will stay on your credit report for years it will eventually fall off and this could also drop your score. Good luck.
A good number of credit card to own is two or three. More than that will be difficult to manage and can only hurt you financially in the long run because you will be tempted to use them all and become heavily indebted. Your credit score will not depend on the number of credit cards you have, but on how well you use them. Cancelling the ones you don’t need won’t hurt as long as you do not have any issues with them.