43. Get Rid of All But One or Two of Your Credit Cards

By the time we decided to simplify our lives, Gibbs and I between us had nine credit cards. We didn’t need nine credit cards. We didn’t use nine credit cards. We didn’t even want nine credit cards. We had them because, like Everest to the climber, they were there. We could have had many more. They arrived, unbidden and with increasing frequency, in the mailbox. It was so easy to just add one more card to our system on the theory that you never know when you might need an extra one.

In fact, the only time we’ve ever used credit cards is for dining out and for traveling—and we always paid the bill in full each month. Not only were all these cards a nuisance to keep track of, but we had to pay anywhere from $25 to $100 a year for the “privilege” of carrying them.

It wasn’t until I started reducing our junk mail (#26) that I began to realize that getting rid of all but one of our credit cards would be another step in simplifying our lives. Not only would it eliminate at least a dozen or more pieces of mail each month (in addition to regular statements, there are routine promotional pieces as well), but it would save us several hundred dollars a year in annual fees, as well as the hassle of carrying and rotating the cards.

After doing some research, we canceled all of our cards, and got one Visa card. We used one of the many banks that offer a choice of a $25 annual fee and an interest rate of 9 percent above prime on the unpaid balance, or no annual fee and a slightly higher interest rate. Since we pay off the balance each month, we chose the no annual fee. We now have a card that costs nothing and is very easy to keep track of.

It took us a while, but we finally figured out that having one or two credit cards is a convenience. Any more than that is more trouble than it’s worth.