financial gurus: any harm in too many banking accounts?

[sniperruff]

my enighborhood has a chase and it offers people $50 for opening up a free checking account... and citibank offers $200 for their direct deposit checking with a balance of $1500 for 15 months...

i want to get both. problem is i already have a checking/saving account with green point bank, and also an ING account.

so my question is, can having too many accounts hurt your credit? should i keep the old green point account if i open up new ones? how about credit cards? is having too many cards bad?

thanks

 

[Legendary]

I don't think too many accounts is bad (I don't think you qualify as enough accounts to warrant any financial suspicion like hiding money and the like)
Too many CCs might be different - everytime you apply for a CC they do a credit check, which lowers your FICO score a little.

 

[TuffGirl]

On my credit report, I have marked "Too many bank or national revolving (i.e. credit) accounts" and "Number of accounts opened within the last 12 months" so apparently the credit reporting agencies keep track of that stuff. However it didn't seem to lower my credit rating; it's still high. I don't think checking accounts are tracked on credit reports, so going with those bank checking account promotions should be ok. If you're not comfortable having too many checking/savings accounts to keep track of, I say just open them, wait for your promotion offer, then close it. I've done that before when Citibank had a free PDA offer way back. Same with credit cards... I open up store ones all the time to get the discounts and then close them later.

 

[arcas]

Ignoring the credit report implications, one disadvantage of having a number of bank/brokerage accounts is your money is very spread out. It's a hassle if something happens and you need to pool money quickly.