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Comment by sharpy | Hacker News Reader

A lot of people chase sign up bonuses. Some credit cards have sign up bonuses equivalent to $1000+. So sign up for a year, and then cancel. Also our credit score systems consider number of open accounts, and anything less than 10 is considered as having too few accounts.

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> anything less than 10 is considered as having too few accounts.

Source? I do not think any person reviewing people’s credit history would rate people higher for having 10 low barrier to entry revolving credit accounts rather than say 5 or even 3.

Different types of credit are weighted differently, so mortgage and auto and student and revolving credit card are not all seen the same, and I would not believe “more is better”, especially just for revolving credit lines for credit cards.

It's proprietary info, part of the scoring models. I think the magic number for best score is actually 20+, but it also counts the closed accounts over the last 7 to 10 years, too.

I recall seeing this in Credit Karma or maybe Experian's FreeCreditScore at one point (that you have to have 20 or 21 accounts for the best score), but cannot find it right now. I think it's a relatively well known number.

Credit Karmas business is collecting fees when people sign up for credit cards and lines of credit they push... they are hardly neutral.

There's diminishing returns (credit score wise) on open accounts once you're at three - ten is hardly necessary - and if you're churning, you don't need the churned card in Apple Pay long-term.

But if you are chasing sign up bonuses, that typically doesn’t happen all at once.

Assume you have a card for restaurants, one of travel, one for grocery’s, one for gas, one for entertainment and one catch all.

That’s 6. What else do you have a dedicated card for? 14 cards with sign up bonuses? All at the same time, each with minimum spending requirements to earn that bonus?

Let’s add some more. I have one card that pays $25 every quarter that I pay off in full every month so I use it once every month. I have a card with rotating categories. Even with multiple rotating categories I don’t see this going up past 12 cards.

Checking and savings debit cards, plus an HSA card add 3 more.

Sure, why do I need my savings account in my apple pay? Why did I put the plastic savings card into my physical wallet? Because that's where all of my other plastic cards are.

"The digital wallet should be able to hold all of my cards, even the ones I use infrequently" would certainly be my expectation.

So, basically, you're telling me I'm better off NOT storing my Hyatt, Marriott and IHG cards in my digital wallet only because I use them once every few years? Why exactly is that? Why not store all the cards in the digital wallet?

It's actually a really good idea, because it's a different account number they gets stored on the device, so, even if your hotel card is compromised because of the hotel leak, the copy in Google Pay will remain active and available. So, I could use it right away on the once-every-two-years bonus category without any extra hassle.

Lol the US has a really weird credit rating system.

Here having no credit cards is best. Because not having to loan shows having the ability of being responsible financially.

Note: here in Europe we get no rewards or anything on credit cards. It's viewed more as a liability, not a virtue.

In fact my credit cards cost money in stamp duty, they don't ever gain me any.

Yep. That makes more sense. But here, they are basically looking at your ability to manage credit "responsibly" by looking at your payment history, and utilization, among other things.

So say if I spend $3000 a month, and pay it off every month in full, and my total credit limit is $10,000, they will ding me regardless of my payment history, because my utilization (30%+) is considered high. So if I want to maximize my credit score, it behooves me to get more cards (easiest way to increase total credit), and spread out the payments among them.

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