Why are people so interested in consolidating their CC credit lines into one CC? I see three benefits:
1. Simpler to have one account and one bill. However, most people are not closing any accounts, so the only benefit is one bill, and that assumes that you let the smaller CC's sit there without use.
2. Have a larger CL with a CC that offers good rewards, rates, or BT offers. However, you can often convert one account into another, which would accomplish the same thing without consolidating.
3. After consolidating, you can try to get the CC's with small CL's increased. This is the biggest benefit that I see.
However, there are detractions:
1. If the bank takes AA, you only have one account. They close it and you lose your entire CL with them. By having several smaller CC's, they are more likely to close one at a time, giving you the chance to utilize the others before losing your entire CL. Or, they may never close more than one.
2. Multiple CC's allows for multiple and varied offers over time.
3. Having one huge CC has to raise more attention from the bank.
No?
I can see consolidating a couple of CC's into one, so long as you keep the CL reasonable ($40K and below?). But I don't think that I would want to consolidate 3-5 cards into one $60-80K card. Just my two cents for all of you.
