DH & I also have several cards with no balance on them. We will be applying for a mortgage soon, so I asked my banker this question. He told me to cancel the majority of the cards, but to keep either a couple with fairly low limits or one card with a pretty decent limit. He said that banks like to see someone have $30,000-$40,000 worth open credit on cards (depending on your income). He says that lets them know that you have a source of available money that you can access quickly. He said they don't like to see huge amounts of open credit because that shows the potential for a problem. We pulled our own credit reports & they said that the amount of unused credit we have may actually be hurting our score. We have only a tiny fraction owed but a lot of open credit. Another thing my banker & the credit report mentioned was the ratio of how much you owe to the amount of open credit. Example: If you owe $5,000 & have two cards with a total credit limit of $20,000, cancelling one card that has a $10,000 limit can actually hurt you. Instead of having a balance that equals one quarter of your available credit, you will now owe an amt. equal to half of your available credit. If you want to cancel, make sure you write a letter to the credit card company & keep it & proof that you mailed it on file. Make sure to request that they note in your file that the card was cancelled at your request. Having a lender cancel your card can hurt your credit score. If you won't be applying for a loan any time soon, you can just leave them & they will drop off of your credit report after a few years.

Hi everyone, Get up earlier in the morning. That'll give you some extra time to figure ways to out-con the masters of con at the con game. Or - perhaps you could do that while in gridlock on your commute, instead of letting your blood pressure rise to calamitous levels. My relations with Citi were getting a few letters a year offering me a loan of up to about $3,500.00. When I called to ask the rate ... ... it was usually around 30% - and that's for one year, not four! I told them that I have a fully secured line of credit for more than they're offering - at 6% (then ... but 6.25%, last time I asked: it's unused at the moment). So - their sending me any more (addressed) mail was a waste of trees, though it did benefit Canada Post, but it wasted their time and mine, as well. So - let's just can it, huh? Haven't got such a letter since. But - their guy did chastise me for being less than courteous - I thought that a bit of a switch! Have a lovely weekend - nice sunny day here, but yesterday the local city got a foot and a half of snow, though only about 4 inches on the farm, about 15 miles away. ole joyful

kathsgrdn-"I just use my debit card to buy gas. " You might want to be little extra watchful when using your card at the pump. Here is one reason why I pay with cash. Happy Birthdayâ¦Iâve stolen $2500 from your account October 27th, 2008 by John Carroll Identity theft is a fast-growing problem, and Iâve taken it seriously for quite awhile. I pay to have people monitor my credit to ensure someone doesnât open accounts in my name, and I try to use temporary credit card numbers when I make online purchases. I shred personally identifiable information that I receive by mail, the better to deter âdumpster diversâ who might use it. Iâm also a stickler for using complex passwords on any site that provides access to financial information. There are many, many ways, however, to have your identity stolen, and though from hindsight this should have seemed an obvious possibility, it wasnât something that I had taken sufficient care to avoid. As the title of this post implies, someone managed to fraudulently withdraw $2500 from my bank account using an ATM card that was a clone of the one my wife and I have in our wallets (Iâm not sure whose card was the original source of the information). This was discovered the night before my birthday, and though I am sure to get all the money back (banks do insure for these kinds of things), it did mean that I spent all day Friday running around faxing, mailing, and filing police reports, which wasnât exactly the way I intended to spend the day. According to a detective at the West Hollywood Sherrifâs department, a group of individuals had apparently installed a device inside a gas station pump in the area. This device had access to all information entered through the payment point. This includes full details of information stored on the magnetic strip on the back of cards (why, oh why, arenât smartcards as common here as they are in Europe), as well as anything entered via the keypad, such as a PIN number or a zip code. The device included a wireless transmitter that broadcast 300-400 feet, allowing someone seated in a car located nearby to capture all the information generated at the pump. At the end of a hard dayâs work, the thief would use this information to print the data onto card âblanks.â Given that my information was for an ATM card, they used it to visit bank machines far from my area of town." A link that might be useful: blogs.zdnet.com/carroll/?p=1887

It happened to DW with our Debit credit card. We bank on line and pay 95% of our bills using on line banking. She notice a $20.00 purchase that we didn't make and notified the bank. The bank representitave told her that it was a good thing that we don't leave money in our checking account and that our over draft was maxed (Thanks to remodeling) They tried to make large pruchases from on line sites like Target, QVC, JC Penney's and Best Buy. Had we not picked up on this when we did they could have cleaned us out because the next day both our pay checks would have been directly deposited into the checking account. The bank credited our account $20 that day. Since then we now have our pay checks deposited into the saving account and tranfer it to checking as we need it. The odd thing about this is that we never use this account for online shopping. I think you stand bigger chance of fraud when using the credit card in a store rather then on line. DW set up our account so that we are alerted to any purchase made over $15. The alert message goes directly to her Blackberry so no matter where we are we are protected.