How Many Credits Cards Should One Have?

I have 3 credit cards: A Visa card that I have a huge credit limit on that I've had since I was 19, but it doesn't give any rewards, another card I got in college sort of as an add-on to my student loan, and I recently got an MBNA Mastercard at 1.9% interest to transfer the balances of my student loans over. I don't think I want to get any more credit cards than that.

I should have the MBNA one paid down this month (before it jumps to 14.99%). Do you think I should just shut it down or leave it open and not use it. What would look better on my credit report?

Quote:

Originally Posted by emdash

Since I started looking into building up my credit report I've come accross some conflicting information in relation to how many different credit cards one person should have. One place said that you should have no more than two or three credit cards total (including store cards) and the other said you should try and get a lot of credit card as the more you have will help your credit score?

So which one is it?

For various reasons I have four credit cards. I always thought of this as too many, but haven’t cancelled mine since the crappiest one is also the oldest, and has no fee, and I want to maintain the age of the card on my credit report. Most people I know have one or two cards. But reading online forums on credit, I see plenty of people with more than four.

Quote:

Originally Posted by emdash

Since I started looking into building up my credit report I've come accross some conflicting information in relation to how many different credit cards one person should have. One place said that you should have no more than two or three credit cards total (including store cards) and the other said you should try and get a lot of credit card as the more you have will help your credit score?

So which one is it?

There are no consistent answers how many credit cards people should carry, though most sources say “between five and ten” (which is far too vague for my tastes) I have four.

I think it's not not the number of credit cards but it's the credit limit. You could own several credit cards but with the same minimal credit limit. Or you could have just one but a with a high credit limit. The bottom line is owning a credit card depends on your capacity to pay.

I hold 2 regular at first but was upgraded by the bank to gold and now one of them was upgraded to platinum. So i think no need to hold many cc as the important thing is the credit limit. Anyway i only use them for emergency as i' afraid unable to pay if i use too much

The ONLY reason I see for more than 1 CC use, is incase one runs out of the limit or one doesn't work when traveling. Sometimes it's good to keep a backup, then again I don't need a backup because I would use my debit as backup card, if my CC limit was reached or just didn't work.

I have only 1 and that 's enough. But my friend has 3-4.

I have been informed on numerous occasions that it is "beneficial" to your credit history to not cancel your unused credit cards. According to "my people" haha by paying off your balance and just storing your unused cards you may be helping your credit score. I would imagine that if you paid off the balance and just locked the card away that anyone looking into your credit would see that you have had this CC account for so many years with no past due balances or incurred late fees. Has anyone else heard anything about this?

I guess two is enough. One for offline transactions and other for online transactions.
This way I can keep track more easily.

Yeah, some of my friends have two or three. But I decided to have only one. I think it's more than enough.