[onewhippedpuppy]

Originally Posted by NICKG

these are not all m/c or visa..I have those and a few others(lowes and HD fior the house) that we use. There are some things that I cannot just pay off every month..the lowes for example has 0% interest for a year..so we use them for our home repairs (which have been substantial).
Realistically I asked more about what a better management would be, and it seems that i am going about it the right way. The problem with "cuting up the cards" is that as you do this and cancel off the accounts, your debt to cfredit ratio goes up...therefore as a result your credit goes down. For example, I have cancelled some cards with 0 balance that had 10k credit limits..when i pulled my next credit report (i do it every 2 months) my credit took a good hit as the balance to available credit went up.. so it is not just that easy. I am looking for a balance and to control these to my best benefit. I do make habit of dropping any card that has the highest intrest and did away with all Capital one cards when i read the horror stories involving them upping interest without warning to good standing customers(we had 7 total cap one cards...) I have also tried to cut down the ones with low limits to get rid of them.

The one card that I have absolutely refused to get is a gas card...no way am i putting gas on a credit card..that is just dumb

Sorry Nick, but this is BS. Justifying CC usage with your credit score is like justifying an expensive house for the tax write-off. It just doesn't add up. I did not have a credit card until I got married at 22, when my wife added me to hers. We've had one mortgage that we paid off when we sold the house, the loan was in both of our names. When we purchased a new house last year, I had excellent credit. Don't kid yourself, you can cut up those cards and it won't impact your credit rating. There is NO good reason to have more than one or two credit cards. I have my Visa debit card and a Discover credit card, no problems.

If you want to get out of this trouble and stay out, you have to change your mentality. "There are some things I cannot just pay off every month" means that you can't afford them. If you can't pay for them today, or pay for them in one month when your bill comes due, you shouldn't buy them. Period, end of story, no exceptions. By definition, you can't afford something if you don't have the money for it. If you don't change your mindset, you'll never get out of CC debt.