Travel Party of 5 | Points & Miles for Family Travel

Credit Cards - Easily know when to Keep / Downgrade / Cancel

• Raya & Duane

Share episode

Book a 1:1 Personalized Points Strategy Session!

We share our strategic framework for deciding when to cancel, downgrade, or keep credit cards to maximize value while maintaining a healthy credit score.

• Always keep cards open for at least one year to maintain good relationships with banks
• No-annual-fee cards should generally be kept open unless they're preventing you from getting other cards
• Evaluate whether annual fee cards provide benefits that exceed their cost (like hotel free night certificates)
• Consider downgrading cards to no-annual-fee versions rather than canceling to preserve your credit line
• Never cancel your oldest credit card as it establishes your length of credit history
• Closing cards impacts your credit utilization ratio which can affect your credit score
• Ask yourself five key questions before making any cancellation decision
• Recent credit card application updates including approvals for Hawaiian Airlines business cards
• Staycation experience at Grand Hyatt Scottsdale with an upgraded hospitality suite
• Unexpected fan encounter at hotel check-in from a podcast listener

Follow us on Instagram for more travel hacking tips and strategies, and check out our website for credit card consultation services if you need personalized guidance.


Speaker 1:

In this hobby, knowing when to cancel a credit card can be just as important as knowing which ones to open in the first place. In today's episode, we are diving into when to keep a card, when to downgrade a card and when to finally let it go and cancel it. So listen in. Hi, I'm Raya.

Speaker 2:

And.

Speaker 1:

I'm Dwayne, and we are your hosts of the Travel Party of Five podcast, where we share how we travel as a family of five around the world.

Speaker 2:

We will also share how we use points and miles to travel as affordably as possible and sometimes even completely free.

Speaker 1:

So if you're wanting to travel more with your family but you're not sure how, we'd love for you to listen in.

Speaker 2:

So welcome to our podcast, where we hope you learn a thing or two to get you closer to your next trip. Welcome back. Thanks for tuning in. Hello friends, it's another wonderful podcast, episode One where Rhea talks most of the time, as usual.

Speaker 1:

Just so you guys know. Before we recorded this, dwayne said Do you need me for this, or do you think you could just do it on your own? Okay, so before we dive into the headline topic, what are we going to talk about? Dwayne?

Speaker 2:

We had a stay at the Grand Hyatt, scottsdale this past weekend. Yeah, it's one of our favorite places. We always go in the summertime because they have a great pool for the kids and they always have a great time what else are we going to talk about? Are you trying to push push your celebrity status?

Speaker 1:

no to me, oh my gosh no, I, right before we started recording, I said we're going to do this and this, and then we're going to talk about when to cancel a credit card. What was the other thing I said?

Speaker 2:

you were subtly trying to. Oh, lord. Okay, let's Get me to talk about how you're famous.

Speaker 1:

First we're going to talk about a few credit cards we got denied for and approved for in the last week. Remember yes.

Speaker 1:

Okay, people really seem to like when we share, like the details of credit card approvals and denials and we have a few. So it has been or, as of the other day, it had been 31 days since I applied for the Chase Sapphire Reserve for business card so and was denied, and so application was officially expired or should have been and so I applied again and was denied again, and so then I applied for Duwayne and Dwayne was also denied and, to be clear, it like says it's going into review. But I know that's a denial for us every single time it's either auto approval or nothing. And my reason for denial was too many open accounts with Chase. Yours was that plus like insufficient business deposit relationship. We don't have business checking accounts with Chase, so I'm just like, okay, whatever, I moved on. Then I also applied for for myself for the Capital One Spark card. I think it's called Spark Plus, something like that. Whatever one has the elevated bonus of 150,000 Capital One points for, I think, 15,000 in spend. If you're listening to this the day that it airs, I'm pretty sure this is the day that that offer expires because it's an elevated offer. So if you're listening to this, in the future this probably doesn't exist anymore, but it's okay, because I was also denied for that one and I even went through all my credit reports and checked which one had the most inquiries and I froze that one. It was Experian. And checked which one had the most inquiries and I froze that one. It was Experian and I froze that one and I was still denied. So Was I also denied. I didn't apply for you because it counts this is a business card but also counts towards 524. And we're both at 424. But I will drop down to 324 in October. So I was willing to sacrifice and go to $524 for a few months, but you cannot do that because you will not be below $424 until October of 2026. So you can only get business cards that don't count towards $524 for the next like close to a year. So didn't apply for you. Like close to a year, so didn't apply for you.

Speaker 1:

But then I moved on to a different bank and I decided to apply for the Hawaiian business card, hawaiian Airlines business card. Okay, it's not an elevated offer. It's like 50,000 miles. It's not a huge amount of spend. I think it's $4,000. But the bank is Barclays and so I took a chance and applied for each of us for that card, and Hawaiian miles are now essentially the same as Alaska miles, and there's a lot of speculation that with the Hawaiian Airlines and Alaska Airlines merger that's been going on in the last year, that the Hawaiian cards are going to go away, and so I figured might as well get those now and we'll start building up our stash of Alaska miles. So both applications went into review, but one to two hours later we each had a text and an email saying like welcome to your new account. So we were both approved for that and actually I need to put that in our travel freely app.

Speaker 1:

But business cards won't count towards 524. A spend that we can easily hit in the next month or two. And then I'm still also working on a minimum spend for the Marriott business card that I opened a few weeks ago. It's Marriott. Yeah, you're right, actually it is Marriott, it just doesn't sound right. You know Marriott rolls off the tongue, but I so, technically, right now we're working on the minimum spend for three cards, but the Marriott card has six months to meet the minimum spend and once we meet the minimum spend and we earned the three free nights, those are going to expire one year from then. So I actually don't want to meet the minimum spend on that for a few more months because I want to be able to use these next fall.

Speaker 1:

So I figured in the meantime we can work on these other cards and I'm still going to attempt one more ink. I'm going to put some spend on Dwayne's one remaining business card with Chase that he has, which is a Chase Ink Preferred, and I'm going to do an Amex and I'm going to put some spend on it over the next month or so and then we're going to apply again for a Chase Inc cash for you and if they don't approve it, we're going to call recon this time because this is getting ridiculous. Yeah, so that's the plan and if you're interested in the cards, I hope that was helpful. We are going to talk a little bit about our staycation at the Grand Hyatt, scottsdale. We didn't want to do a whole episode because I think we already have two episodes on the Grand Hyatt and it kind of felt redundant, but it remains one of our favorite hotels. Yeah, let's talk about it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's one of our favorites. Like I said, the pool there is great, service is great and it's a 20 minute drive from where we live.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's not far at all. Yeah, even the kids. When we drove home earlier today, one of our kids was like that wasn't long at all and it wasn't so.

Speaker 2:

So why don't you talk about the check in?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so okay, so we okay.

Speaker 1:

It's kind of the check in was a process and leading up to this day, there was a bunch of weird things that were happening and so this room was obviously booked under my name so we could use my globalist status and but, like, dwayne kept getting the emails leading up to it, which was weird, but it wasn't showing in his Hyatt app, it was still showing in mine, and so we had just booked a standard room, kind of hoping it's summer, like in Phoenix, it's low season, right, it's not super busy.

Speaker 1:

Was hoping for some kind of an upgrade and I could see that they had suites available during our stay. So, and we were only there for two nights, also as a side note so we go to check in and the girl is first, first of all, super nice and helpful. Was having a hard time, like she could see our reservation, but the my status wasn't showing up and it kept pulling like his under his name, but it was. The whole thing was very weird. We were at check-in for a long time. Um, once she finally kind of got it figured out, she even had to call like the help, like Hyatt help desk or whatever.

Speaker 1:

Corporate something, and she was like she would try to put in my email. And when she would put in my email she was like I can see your status. Like I know your name was on the reservation because I've been looking at the like like the logs for the last few weeks. She's like I know that it was there, but now it's under Duane's name. For the last few weeks she's like I know that it was there, but now it's under Dwayne's name. So she was basically trying to apply my status and I'm like, listen, I don't care whose name it's under, as long as number one, I get the qualifying nights, because we need that to keep the status, and number two, we get the benefits.

Speaker 1:

So eventually it ended up working out. And then I was like, by the way, are there any suites that I could see in the app? They had the palm suite, that's their standard suite. And but she was like no, it's not available. And I was like, really, cause, it shows available in the app. And she's like I can show you like how it looks back here, but it's only available for one of the nights. And I was like, well, just so you know, it shows that I can book it online. So like you should probably double check on that, because someone's someone else is probably going to be thinking the same thing I'm thinking and I fully, I want to be clear. I fully believed her, but I was also saying like, hey, like this is showing available, so if it's not some and someone books it, they're gonna be mad, so anyway. So she's like I do have like an upgrade if you want to pay, and it's a, the suite was the hospitality suite and that's a premium suite.

Speaker 2:

And she said it was going to be an extra $350 a night.

Speaker 1:

Yes, and I was like, oh no, that's, that's way too much. I was like we're not going to do that. Um, I was like, is there any way you could do any better? And she's like, okay, hold on, let me look and let me check. And so she ended up saying they could do it for $150 a night. But I think that was only because we were having such a struggle getting checked in.

Speaker 2:

I mean, we were at the check-in desk at For like a half an hour. Yeah, for at least half an hour yeah.

Speaker 1:

And then, I think also to compound things, we also had other reservations under our name for the next night for some of Duane's family that was going to come and stay, kind of. That was kind of a last minute thing and so she was like, wait, do you have three reservations? We're like we do, but one is for tomorrow and these are like standard rooms and blah, blah, so blah. So, anyways, I went back and forth do I want to pay the 150 a night? But ultimately we wanted to have the extra space. We knew we had a bunch of family coming and they would have standard rooms, and so I just thought, sure.

Speaker 1:

And also, to be honest, I was a little curious to see this suite, because I saw it in the app and I was, wow, that looks like really. It was over a thousand dollars a night, so I was like, wow, that looks really nice. So I said, okay, let's do it. So we, we did pay the 150. I thought that was super reasonable. Do you want to explain, like, what the hospitality suite is? Because I didn't even know. This is a thing some hotels have, apparently.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's just it's usually used for groups that are in-house, that have meetings or conferences and they typically it could be a meeting point for them or it could be like a late night suite where they can go and, you know, get some wine, play some cards or whatever it is. But I mean, it was probably. I mean, how big do you think it was? I mean a thousand square feet room. The balcony on this hospitality suite was another thousand square feet.

Speaker 1:

Yes, the name of the suite was the hospitality suite with extended balcony.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean it wasn't a thousand square feet, but it was probably at least 400 square feet.

Speaker 1:

It was huge. The balcony, yes. So essentially the hospitality suite is right next door to a standard king room and there's a connecting door. So we had a standard king room for Duane and I and in that king room was a pull-out chair that like a small child could have slept on. We didn't end up ever, or not. A chair, a little sofa, it was a single bed, so like a kid could have slept on it, but we never ended up using it. And then the connecting door opens up into the hospitality suite, which had like a huge dining room table for like six or eight people, a little like a wet bar, yeah, like a, like a, an actual fridge, not like a yeah not like a um mini fridge, but like a I don't know.

Speaker 1:

It was like drawers that you pulled out, but it was a fridge and there were two of them, um, like storage and stuff, an electric kettle, the you know the coffee pot, all of that, a sink and then another full bathroom, so two full, and then like a huge living room area with a pullout sofa, bunch of chairs and then the balcony. We're on the second floor, so not super high up, but the view out the balcony was beautiful. I mean, it was a ton of room, it was so much room. It was more room than we needed, quite honestly, but the suite was beautiful.

Speaker 1:

I don't think, generally, you could get an upgrade for that cheap. I just think they were gracious because we're having a lot of issues at check in and, like I was, I wasn't stressed about the check in process. It did take longer than usual, but I was just kind of like I knew it was going to be figured out, like I wasn't worried about it, you know, yeah, and so then Dwayne's family came on Saturday and stayed Saturday night and our kids they have a couple of cut their cousins were there and so got to spend all day in the pool playing with their cousins. And we went out to dinner and got to wake up and have breakfast and they just thought like I mean, how fun that you get to hang out in a hotel with your cousins for like a whole day Having a great time.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, thriving. Even our 11-year-old said he had a great time. That's high praise.

Speaker 2:

But while we were checking in, rhea got a message. This is the whole celebrity thing I was talking about earlier. So while we were checking in, r gets a message on instagram. Yes, from a listener shout out to you hi, angie, miss angie. Shout out to you that said oh my god, I just saw you checking into the grand hyatt hotel. Um, apparently she's a teacher and she said that she was there with her husband celebrating her anniversary.

Speaker 1:

I think so yeah.

Speaker 2:

And that she booked her stay there on points and from what she learned from you.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I was like oh my God, this is first of all.

Speaker 2:

And that's pretty effing awesome.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we like. First of all, I was so in shock because the beginning of the message was like I just saw you checking in at the Grand Hyatt, Scottsdale, and I was like I was like what? I was like that's never happened to me before in my life. And then the rest of the message was just so kind and I was like oh my God. I was like wait, why didn't you say hi?

Speaker 2:

Very nice yes.

Speaker 1:

And they were like on their way out, their Uber was there or something any of you in real life Like. But I just was like this has never happened to me before and I was like this is so funny. And then I like texted my mom and my sister and I was like this is like the best thing I've ever read, like I love this, and so, oh, and I was like I'm never gonna shut up about this. And so then they were just joking the whole weekend about.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I had to like wipe the sweat from her forehead. I had to stand her down when she was at a massager feet when she was tired like I had oh god, none of that is true but I had to treat her like a celebrity. Oh please, even when my family got there, I said hey, do me a favor, text, ray, and tell him that you're here because of what you learned on our broadcast.

Speaker 1:

Oh my God, yeah, we were having a. It was pretty funny. But hello, Angie.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for listening.

Speaker 1:

I hope that you had an amazing time on your trip and I hope the hotel did not disappoint Hopefully, I mean. I think us going there back over and over again, I feel like, is proof that it's a it's a really good property. So yeah and yeah. So we oh, I did want to talk one more thing. So I was able to gift club.

Speaker 1:

Oh, this, I'm sorry, this was another issue. Actually, I tried to gift club access awards to the other two rooms that were booked for Dwayne's family so that they could access the club and get the breakfast and all that. But when I tried to do it through Hyatt chat it wouldn't work. So when I mentioned that at check in, after we already had all these other issues with our names being linked and they couldn't unlink him, it was so strange. I was like I also tried to apply these club awards but like, but they told me I couldn't. And she was like wait, that's weird. Of course you can. She's like I'll just apply it for you to the room. So they did get club access for the day that they were there. I don't think they used our club access awards, so we still have them. I find them hard to use, quite honestly, because when you have status, you get it anyway.

Speaker 1:

So, anyways, we were able to use the club. It was really great, actually, because everyone saved a ton of money and it included the breakfast. And when we were there in March, february, march the breakfast for globalists was in the club. But now and I don't know if this is forever or what but now it's not in the club. But now and I don't know if this is forever or what, but now it's not in the club. The club doesn't open until 11. And you have breakfast in the Mesa Central, which is like the regular breakfast restaurant. So you can either do the buffet or order off the menu, your choice. But I like that better than a club breakfast because it gives you more options. And I generally like to order off a menu because I think it's better food, because it's like hot and fresh, you know, and with the club access, all of all of the people with us and all three of the rooms we had ate for free.

Speaker 2:

We had a table for 13 people. We had so many people this morning that they had to throw us in like a different restaurant with their table.

Speaker 1:

They moved us into a back room, which was funny, shout out to our server. Yeah, he was great. We've had him multiple times.

Speaker 2:

We've had him every year.

Speaker 1:

we've been there he's great and he's been there for a long time. Anyways, I guess that wraps it up. Everything else we've ever said about the property remains the same. They have lots of fun activities. When we were at the pool yesterday there was painting going on. You had to. Some of them you have to sign up in advance for, so if you have a stay coming up, just check on the website and make sure you don't need like a reservation.

Speaker 2:

Um I mean the adult pool all day had a dj playing music. Yeah, um, the kid pool had a DJ at night from I think it was like 6 to 9.

Speaker 1:

Actually yes.

Speaker 2:

The lights going on.

Speaker 1:

Our kids were out on our balcony listening to the music and apparently it was the music from K-pop Demon Hunters, which is a hot thing right now.

Speaker 2:

Apparently, it's really popular right now.

Speaker 1:

I mean it's catchy. I catch myself jamming to it when the kids are watching it. You've never heard it.

Speaker 2:

I mean, I hear it every day.

Speaker 1:

You don't think it's catchy, though I mean it's okay.

Speaker 1:

Okay, anyways, enough about the hotel. It's great. We'll go back again next year. We go every year. One of the top three things that I get asked is around canceling credit cards, and I know that we've talked about this in a previous episode, but when someone asked me the other day, I tried to go back and find the episode and I couldn't Like, based on all the episode titles, I couldn't find it. So we are going to title this episode something along the lines of canceling credit cards and we're going to talk about kind of how, how we think through, or how I think through, the process, because I think there's just like everything in this hobby, there's just a lot of nuance and like various strategies that go into canceling cards. So, and I think, okay, let me ask you this If I were like you need to cancel this credit card, what do you do? You feel a certain way about that.

Speaker 2:

Nothing at all. I okay, Well, that that didn't lead me to where I wanted to go, but you told me to cancel a card, I'm going to cancel it and not think twice about it. Okay.

Speaker 1:

I think people get stuck on this because they don't want to do the wrong thing and they're not sure if it makes sense to cancel and they don't want to make the bank mad. That's like what I think. Why I think it's a difficult decision, right? They're like I don. Why I think it's a difficult decision, right? They're like I don't want to piss off the bank and I don't want them to be upset with me, right For canceling a card. So, okay, these are the things I think through when I think okay, am I going to? Does it make sense to keep this card or cancel it?

Speaker 1:

Number one it has to be open for a year, no matter what. Sometimes I see people post in Facebook groups where they're like okay, open this card 10 days ago. And I'm like having anxiety about it, like, should I just cancel it? Absolutely freaking, not, no way. You've. You've committed keep it open for a year. Okay, you, at this point, you're already gonna be charging annual fee If there is one like it for a year. Okay, you, at this point, you're already gonna be charging annual fee if there is one like it. Like, let it go, it doesn't matter. So, always, always, always, keep it open for at least a year and because we track all of our cards in the travel freely app, it alerts me when the one year mark is coming up. So when I go in there to look it'll be, I think it's like reddish colored if there's an annual fee coming up in the next, like 45 days or so and that's when I know, okay, the anniversary of this card is coming up and that's when I can figure out like am I going to keep it? Am I going to cancel it? Am I going to downgrade it maybe? So number one has it been open for at least a year? If the answer is yes, then it's like okay, is there an annual fee? If there's no annual fee, I'm probably going to leave it open, unless keeping it open is preventing me from getting another card or similar card. So, like the Chase Inc cards, for example, a lot of the a lot of people get denied now that they've cracked down because you have too many business cards open. So I'm probably going to close out my Chase Inks as they hit the year mark for the most part. The Chase Inc cash is probably the biggest exception because I can earn 5x at office supply stores on that card. So I've had my chasing cash open for more than a year at this point, almost two, okay. So number one has it been more than a year? Number two is there an annual fee? Okay, if there is an annual fee, then it's like okay, what is the annual fee? And am I using the benefits?

Speaker 1:

So for, like a co branded card, meaning like an airline card or a hotel card? Most of those not all, but most of those, especially the hotel cards are around like 95 to $99 annual fee every year and a lot of those hotel cards specifically come with an annual free night certificate. So we have the IHG Premier card or I do and I also have the World of Hyatt personal card. Both of those come with a free night certificate every year. I've had the IHG card open for two years now and the World of Hyatt for almost one. I've used my IHG free night certificate every year and I will absolutely use my Hyatt one and I know exactly where we're going to use it next year. So those cards, even though they have an annual fee, those are worth it to me because the benefit that we're getting is always more than the annual fee. Right, like we use our IHG card at or free night certificate. I mean, when we went to Yosemite I think that room was like 200 bucks. We use the free night certificate plus like 11,000 IHG points or something like that. So I think that's well. That's well over the $95 annual fee that we pay for it. So we're coming on ahead there. Same with the Hyatt. Like it's a category one through four. I'm going to use it at a category four hotel if I can and for sure earn back the. You know the. I think it's $95 annual fee. So if there is an annual fee and you're not using the benefits to cover it, and that can be for, like the higher cards, right, like the Amex Business Platinum, for example.

Speaker 1:

I have two right now. My one year anniversary on the first one just hit and I'm going to cancel it. I just need to make sure I'm using up as many credits as I can for the second half of the year and then I'm going to be canceling the card because we don't need to and I struggle to use the benefits, especially now that they have kind of changed them. I struggled to use the benefits for that. So that's when we're going to close. That's when we're going to close Another card I just closed for you is the United Business card, and I closed that because it's a Chase card and it had a $99 annual fee. And I also have this card, so we don't both need to have one. Having a United card gives you access to more award availability, so it's important that one of us has a card, but we don't both need to have a card. We don't fly United very often. We just got it because it was an elevated bonus and it was a business card. So what are your thoughts on any of this so far?

Speaker 2:

Like I said, you're going to be doing most of the talking because you're the accountant, slash travel agent, slash El Jefa.

Speaker 1:

El Jefa.

Speaker 2:

The boss.

Speaker 1:

That sounds attractive, okay, so that's kind of how I think through the annual fee or I'm sorry, not the annual fee the decision of whether or not to close it. So has it been open a year, more than a year? Is there an annual fee? You know, if no, I'm going to keep it open, unless it's preventing me from getting another card, and in that case I'm going to close it. And then, if there is an annual fee, am I using the benefits? If no, I'm going to close it, and that's that's really it. That's how I think through it.

Speaker 1:

I think there are some other options if you don't want to cancel the card, and that is downgrading cards, and I think this is kind of overlooked a little bit. But there are A lot of personal cards that have annual fees that can be downgraded to cards that have no annual fee, and there are some business cards you can do that with as well. An example of a business card would be like I could downgrade my Amex Platinum to an Amex Blue Business Plus. Maybe I'll do that. There's no annual fee. I already have a Blue Business Plus, so I don't know. I guess I can think through that, but my goal is to get rid of that annual fee because I don't want to pay it. On that specific card, we downgraded your Chase Sapphire Preferred a few months ago to a Chase Freedom Flex that also has no annual fee and allows you actually to earn 5X on rotating bonus categories Every quarter they change on rotating bonus categories, every quarter they change. So I think, think, thinking through, like, can I downgrade this card and if so, what would I downgrade to? Again, there are a lot of business cards where you can't eat. There's no downgrade option. But there are some personal cards I find generally have a more. There's there's more options available for downgrading. So if you have a specific card that you're wondering about, I would just Google it. Just Google, like what can I downgrade my blah blah blah card to and see what the options are. You could also ask chat GPT and see what it says, but you got to take what chat GPT tells you, or even Google, with a grain of salt.

Speaker 1:

So one of the benefits of downgrading versus canceling is that you are going to keep your total available credit amount the same. So one of the pieces that goes into what makes up your credit score is your credit utilization ratio and that is basically a ratio of how much credit card debt do you have, and when I say debt, I mean like any kind of balance, so it doesn't have to be true credit card debt. But it could be like oh, I have a $2,000 balance from last month's expenses that I haven't paid yet. Okay, that is the first piece of your of the ratio, and then the second piece is the total amount of available credit you have. So, across all the credit cards that you have, right, what are all the credit limits? You would add that up and that's your total amount of available credit.

Speaker 1:

So if you had three credit cards and they had $30,000 limits on each, your total available credit is $90,000. And then if your balance is let's, for easy math, let's just say it's $9,000. So you're using 9,000 of 90, your utilization ratio is 10%. Okay, the lower that ratio generally is the better, and a way to keep the ratio low is to make sure that you're keeping your available credit high. So that's one thing to think about when you are canceling a credit card is is there a downgrade option that would give me no annual fee but would still keep my total amount of available credit the same? Because if you lower your available credit, then your credit utilization percentage goes up. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

So that is something to think about. So if you can downgrade, I think that's maybe a better option. But I also think, like it's okay to cancel cards. I have canceled three cards in the last month to cancel cards. I have canceled three cards in the last month. One of them is the United Business for you. I'm going to cancel my Amex Business Platinum one of them or downgrade it. And then the other one was a Barclays AA card that you had that you just got a little over a year ago, so canceled all those and your credit has stayed the same. It's fine. The credit utilization ratio is a small percentage I want to say 10-ish percent of your total credit score, so it's not going to have a huge effect. But if you cancel six cards in a month, like then, it is going to have a big effect. You know what I mean. That's the other piece to keep in mind.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I do think there's one more piece that goes into keeping a card, and we kind of touched on this when we said the benefits. But like, for example, right now you and I each have the Chase Sapphire reserve card. The annual fees on those are are $800 each, so that's $1,600 are like there's some credits and whatever that offset some of that. But we need a card that can transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards to travel partners, and that is one of them. So that's one reason to keep it. We also live in a our home airport is Phoenix, which has a Chase Sapphire lounge, and by each of us holding that card we can each get in ourselves plus two guests, which means we can take the into all the kids with us when we travel into that lounge, which will save us some money. We'll have to see over the next year how, like how often, we're actually able to utilize that as a family, because that will factor into whether we keep it as the reserve after the year markets or if we downgrade it to a preferred, for example.

Speaker 1:

I also think there's one other thing to mention, and that is if a credit card is your oldest credit card, you should never, ever, close that. Hopefully it doesn't have an annual fee. If it does, see if you can downgrade it. But you never want to close your oldest credit card, because that is what determines the length of your credit history, or at least that's part of it, and length of credit history is another factor that goes into determining your credit score and the longer your credit history generally, the determining your credit score and the longer your credit history generally, the better your credit score. Duane is just staring at me, like again.

Speaker 2:

That's why I said do you need me on this podcast?

Speaker 1:

I wanted you to talk about our stay at the grand hyatt, for sure, okay. So I'm gonna recap. Before canceling a credit card, these are what. This is what you want to ask yourself. Number one has it been open at least a year, okay? Number two is there an annual fee? If the answer is yes, is the annual fee worth it and am I using the benefits every year without, like you know, jumping through hoops? You know what I mean with the coupon books, right? Number three, is having this card open keeping me from getting another one or a better sign up bonus? Number four will closing this hurt my credit utilization or length of credit history? And then, number five is there a downgrade path for this card? So, answer all those questions and then decide. You know what's going to be best for you and your situation. That's the really tricky part about credit cards is everyone's situation is so different and no one can, can definitively say like, yes, you should cancel this or not, because every scenario is a little bit different. So I think deciding whether to keep, downgrade or cancel it's, you know, like we've talked about. It's not just about the annual fee. There's a whole like overall point strategy that goes along with that. I think.

Speaker 1:

Take a few minutes to run through these questions and you know with your own cards and you might be surprised which ones are worth keeping and which ones are not. If you are looking for additional support around any of this, or maybe you know what to do with the points you already have or the cards you have or anything like that. I do have fully live now credit card um consultations. They are not free, they are paid consultations, but you get a full hour with me and we can go through whatever it is you want to go go through Um.

Speaker 1:

My original intention was to help someone like okay, you have you know these points with these issuers. Like let's book a trip when do you want to go? Like that was my initial plan, but really it can be whatever you are wanting or needing help with. Again, it is not free, it is a paid consultation, but you get a pre-questionnaire from me to fill out so we can spend the entire hour like actually kind of walking through and solving whatever the problem is and wherever you want to go. And then you also get a follow up with like clear next steps, like including like videos of like this is how you transfer your points and this is how you'll do it, and all that. I cannot book any travel for you because I'm not a travel agent and nor should you want to give me any of your login information, but we can like I can literally make it as clear as possible, so if you're a beginner, that's something I would recommend if you need help around that arena, and I don't know anything else to add.

Speaker 2:

I just have a question. So if I'm at 424. Yeah, and I cancel one of those cards, it doesn't make, it doesn't matter, right, it doesn't matter.

Speaker 1:

324 now right, yeah, so it goes off of the date opened, and so even if you cancel it, it doesn't matter, because it was opened and that's what counts. So the only thing that can make a card fall off your 524 status is time. It's a good question, though all right.

Speaker 2:

Well, I hope this was helpful to someone out there.

Speaker 1:

Yes, feel free In podcast land. Feel free to message me on Instagram if you have questions, I will put a link to. If you want to sign up for a consultation, I'll put a link to that in the show notes and we will catch you on the next episode.

Speaker 2:

Yes, Thanks for tuning in Okay.

Speaker 1:

Bye.

Speaker 2:

Have a good one, thank you.