Guest post by Cori V
I have opened a number of creditcards in my day, which I know can be a risky practice for a relatively young girl. I am sucker for store creditcards when I am making big purchases. They always manage to sell me on the idea that I can get 10, 20, sometimes 30% off of my entire purchase if I just open there store card!
It is hard to resist something like that when you are already having pangs of guilt over the amount of money your are about to spend. How can you really turn down knocking a few dollars off that cash register display? The only good (or maybe bad?) thing is that I generally only use the card that day and then never again.
I am really unclear on how this effects your credit score. I have head mixed things about having multiple credit cards. Some people have told me that the more credit you have available to you, the higher your score, but some people have told me that having many cards hurts your score. I have even heard that canceling cards lowers your credit score.
As far as I know when I open a credit card that is for a specific store, they generally expire (or are essentially canceled) once you have not used them for a certain amount of time (usually somewhere between 6 months and a year) so I wonder if that is lowering my score too.
It is all kind of confusing and I really should invest some time into researching to find out what the truth is because I know how important having good credit will be when it comes time for me to do things like buy a house. I have never actually had my credit score checked, which is something else I would like to do, but I heard that the more you check it that that can also lower your score! Yeesh, it is starting to feel like a credit score minefield!
Check out Clarkhoward.com for financial advice, he is on a radio station around here and makes a lot of sense as far a money matters go.
Hubby and I had never really used a credit card much until the past year, we found a card that give good rewards and I track it weekly and pay it off at the end of the month. It’s nice to have the rewards ad up and when we plan a vacation that’s the first place we look to find funding 🙂
I just came over from the UBP12 and really like your blog, I will be back 🙂
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Having bunch of credit cards can really give you a mess. As always, you should consider other important factors before grabbing another one. And just like what Kendra said, there are credit cards that offer great advantages like membership and club discounts, rewards, rebates etc. You can also check for free credit score calculators out there.
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