No Longer using my Credit Cards-my experience

[Logan]

My latest credit card experience has me finished with credit cards!!!

I just had a credit card reduce my limit from 6K to $1150 and my other card is WAMU (Chase) who just decided to add a $10 service charge to my GF's 3.99% balance transfer for life. Recently one of my cards wouldn't let me charge even though I made a payment. I called and they wanted to make sure my payment cleared even though it was an electronic payment with my banks bill pay. WTFO?

I have a few Credit Cards primarily for 2 reasons.

1) to re-establish credit which I now have a 686 mid FICO

2) My checking account earns 5% interest so floating $1500 on Credit Cards makes me money.

10 years ago I was making 24K a year with 100K in available credit and today I make 100K with no debt and I pay off my cards every month (I do have a BK but I now have a history with my cards and they can see me pay them off every month).

After some consideration and seeing what they just did to my GF who has a 740 credit score I have decided to have a separate bank account which I fund monthly with my budgeted money and only use a Credit Card only for International purposes (I travel regularly), internet purchases and hotel and car reservations.


No more credit!!!

Logan

[Logan]

I have just decided to close the credit card account that lowered my Credit Line. Goodbye Juniper!!!

[Flamingo]

I understand where you are coming from and why you need to have credit cards but if you are making $100,000 a year and pay off your cards each month, why use them? Just keep them open and charge something now and then to keep them open. You can always close them out when something better comes along and it sounds like you are dong OK. You are complaining about the cards yet you state you use them to float $1500 a month in your checking account to earn 5% interest. It's not like it is a huge amount of money if you earn $100,000 a year and have no debt...

Everyone, even folks with excellent credit, are seeing credit limits slashed and home equity lines reduced and if you have open credit cards with zero balance that have not been used in a while, they are getting closed out by the creditor. Many banks, including ours, with their balance transfers have a minimum charge of $10 for any transfer to keep people from doing numerous low amount transfers on low or zero interest checks.

[Logan]

$1500 is 75 bucks a year and sometimes make larger purchases so it's more than that. Why wouldn't I want to make more money in interest?

[TooMuchCredit]

Closing an account will actually lower your Credit Bureau score. It might be better just to leave it open and not use it.

[Never_Again]

$1500 is 75 bucks a year and sometimes make larger purchases so it's more than that. Why wouldn't I want to make more money in interest?

It sounds like a lot of freakin' work for $75.00 per year!

That is one of those things that is more hyped than what it actually works out to be. "Play the float, and use their money for free."

Sure, it woks in theory, but does it really? And, have you ever seen anyone get rich on $75.00 per year? If you miss that payment one month by mistake, you will lose the money that you made.

I can put the effort elsewhere and make $75.00 per year with much less risk.

I used to make $2000 per year on Discover cash back bonuses. The risk is always there, though... you tend to charge more when using credit cards.

But, do what works for you...

[Logan]

It sounds like a lot of freakin' work for $75.00 per year!

That is one of those things that is more hyped than what it actually works out to be. "Play the float, and use their money for free."

Sure, it woks in theory, but does it really? And, have you ever seen anyone get rich on $75.00 per year? If you miss that payment one month by mistake, you will lose the money that you made.

I can put the effort elsewhere and make $75.00 per year with much less risk.

I used to make $2000 per year on Discover cash back bonuses. The risk is always there, though... you tend to charge more when using credit cards.

But, do what works for you...

How is using my credit cards a lot of freakin' work? It's absolutely no work at all. I buy things with my credit card and then I pay it off. How hard is that.

I have never missed a payment in my life on anything and won't be anytime soon. Even before my BK I paid all of my bills on time.

As far as spending more? I don't want or need to be on a budget at this point in my life. I declared BK because I've lost 7 jobs in 14 years and had a divorce. I bought a house 13 days before September 11th and because of that event I lost my job.

I'm just fed up with the way these credit cards are doing business. They gave me a credit line of 6K 6months ago and nothing has changed except improvement on my credit and they took it away. If that's the way they want to do business then everyone needs to stop doing business with them.

Logan

[Logan]

Closing an account will actually lower your Credit Bureau score. It might be better just to leave it open and not use it.

It would be a short term hit. Who cares about a short term hit?

I have enough credit and I pay the full balance and I pay early. That's what will ultimately determine my credit score, not closing one credit account.

Here's a snipet from http://credit.about.com/od/creditrep...ecardscore.htm.

Your credit score will drop if you close a credit card:
# that still has a balance
# that has available credit when your other credit cards do not
# that was the first you ever opened
# when you have no other credit cards or loans


For me, None of the above so I'm canceling!!!

Logan