Credit cards can be good

Here is an article I read about a guy with 25 credit cards.

http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/112976/meet-credit-card-king-with-300000-in-credit-marketwatch?mod=bb-creditreports

While its interesting how they note that credit cards can be good for building credit and earning rewards points, I personally think this is pretty stupid.

Why do you need 25 credit cards?

If you take just the two they mentioned that I know have fees (the Amex platinum and the Visa Black), that's almost a thousand dollars in fees and thats just ten percent of his cards.

Building your credit can be important. It will save you money down the road on interest rates to buy a house or car or pay for your kid's education. But where do you draw the line? This seems like the guy in college who always sat in the front row and would cry if he didn't get the highest grade in every class. If you get higher than an A+ you're just wasting your time. So what if you have a FICO score of 810? If you are over 720-740 there are few benefits a normal person would ever experience or be provided.

Instead, he says he has balances on some of the cards and "I like to pay my bills on time". Are you joking? If you have so many cards that you can't 100% pay all your bills on time, you aren't using them right. And my personal opinion is that if you have a balance on ANY credit card you are throwing money away in interest payments.

Now I can understand wanting to rack up the rewards points (I love them more than most), but they come at a price and are never worth spending extra money on products for. I applaud having a card that gives you 30% off at a retailer or putting all of your business and personal expenses on a card, but at some point, you will only earn rewards by spending money. You must weigh the cost and benefits of these decisions.

There are many benefits to having credit cards. There also come big risks for many in having even one.

Twenty five credit cards...sounds like twenty two too many to me.

Sincerely,

Coco