Giving Credit Where Credit Isn't Due

I canceled a credit card with a $25,000 line of credit this week. It was a card I didn't use much anyway for which I failed to make a $11.25 payment on time, missing it by a couple days. I was charged a $15 late fee, which is actually LESS than some of the usurious charges on some cards: $25, $29, $35, even $39. The customer service rep was very helpful, but, surprisingly, she did not ask why I was canceling, trying to keep me as a customer, which is usually the case.

Now, my available credit on my cards is only twice my gross income, which is still absurd. (This does not count any credit cards involving my wife.)

I started collecting credit cards in the 1980s. For a while after college, I had none. Then I got one from Sears (first purchase: a clock-radio), which at the time was considered easy to get. Then I'd get any and every card they'd give me, as long as I didn't have to pay an annual fee. It became a game. More than once, I'd get a card free for six months, then cancel it; as often as not, when I called, they agreed to waive the fee for another year; you can often negotiate with these folks.

But now that I care about things such as credit scores (my most current one was 751, whatever that means), I've taken the advice of pieces like this and this and this.

ROG