Is Four Cards Too many to Carry?

[rbbyrbsn]

technically I think you can get away 4 credit accounts(all types not just credit cards) with outstanding balances on them.

so if your going to apply credit try to pay down accounts so that most 4 accounts are showing balances on the credit report

Source
http://www.myfico.com/ficocreditscoreestimator/

5. How many of your loans and/or credit cards currently have a balance?

0 to 4
5 to 6
7 to 8
9 or more

[parise]

Thats the thing, you want to have your cards paid down if you are going to have 3 or 4 cards. You don't want to walk around with all these cards and all of them are in debt. That makes no sense what so ever to me.