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By LaToya Irby, About.com Guide to Credit / Debt

How Many Credit Cards Do You Have?

Friday December 7, 2007
In your quest for better credit, you've likely questioned whether you have too many credit cards. The ideal number of credit cards is a difficult number of come up with because different people have different financial situations. You can use some guidelines to help evaluate your number of cards.
  • Is the number of credit cards causing your debt-to-income ratio to increase?
  • What about your credit utilization?
  • Do you have more credit cards than loans and other types of credit accounts?
  • Are you having trouble keeping up with your credit card balances and payments?
If you answered yes to any of those questions, it's possible that you have too many credit cards.
More Reading:
Do You Have Too Many Credit Cards | Five Credit Cards You Should Never Close

Comments

December 11, 2007 at 3:44 pm
(1) Sandra says:

I was wondering… I have no debt at all right now. I use two different credit cards with rewards, and I pay them off every month. However, sometimes I get offers from credit cards with attractive features, such as the MyPoints or Amazon credit cards that give free gift certificates if I sign up.

I was wondering if signing up for these credit cards and using them rarely, or not at all, would hurt my credit rating, or if it would look good to have more cards with open credit.

Thanks for your help!

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