New year, smarter wallet: How to organize your credit cards in 2026

Owning more than one credit card can help you take advantage of complimentary benefits and rewards. However, if you have three or more cards, it’s a good idea to take time each year to review your wallet and ensure you’re not paying for perks you don’t need or missing out on opportunities to maximize your cards.

Managing your credit card collection isn’t as easy as spring cleaning, where you simply discard what you don’t use. There are important credit factors to consider, and closing a card isn’t your only option for reducing the annual fees you pay.

To pick the cards you want to keep, you have to do some math. That way, you can answer the question of, “Do the benefits outweigh the cost?”

Certain benefits have a clear value, such as credits and rewards. For example, the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card (see rates and fees) comes with up to $50 in annual Chase Travel^SM hotel credits. This perk is worth (you guessed it) up to $50 toward a hotel booking you make through Chase Travel. If you take advantage of this credit every year, this $95-annual-fee card costs you a net $45 to renew each year.

However, other benefits are harder to assign value to, such as travel insurance, shopping protections or airport lounge access. The Sapphire Preferred has excellent insurance perks, including primary rental car insurance and trip delay reimbursement.

When you rent a car, the primary rental car coverage can save you $15+ a day compared to paying for the rental company’s collision damage waiver, and the trip delay benefit reimburses you up to $500 per ticket for eligible delays. Either of these features could save you enough to more than cover the Sapphire Preferred’s entire annual fee, so as you’re assessing your cards, don’t ignore hard-to-quantify benefits.

Perks such as airport lounge access may provide less value if your travel habits have changed or you frequent different airports than when you applied for the card. Specific lounges may not be available at these airports, or they may be inconveniently located or overcrowded.

You should also pay attention to overlapping benefits that are no longer useful to you. If the only reason why you’re keeping a card is for its purchase protection or extended warranty benefit, review other cards in your wallet to ensure you don’t already have the same perk.

For cards you don’t use but want to keep open to maintain your credit history, be careful not to just put them in the sock drawer; card issuers may close inactive accounts. To avoid account closure, put a small recurring charge on the card, such as a utility bill or streaming service subscription.

After you assess which cards to keep and cut, take a look at the rewards and perks your current cards offer and see if there are any areas of improvement.

Perhaps you’re spending more on groceries and gas, and you don’t have a card that earns more than 1X points on those categories. Depending on how much you spend on those purchases, a card that earns 3X points or more on groceries and gas could be well worth opening. Plus, opening a new card gives you a chance to earn a welcome bonus worth hundreds of dollars.

Let’s say you currently spend $700 a month on groceries and earn 1% cash back ($7 per month). With the Capital One Savor Cash Rewards Credit Card, you can earn 3% cash back at grocery stores and a $200 cash bonus after spending $500 on purchases in the first three months from account opening. That’s an extra $168 back on groceries over the year on top of the welcome bonus, and you get all that with no annual fee.

Or if you’re a big foodie, the American Express® Gold Card earns 4X Membership Rewards® points on up to $50,000 spent at restaurants per calendar year (then 1X points). It can also double as your grocery credit card because it earns 4X Amex points up to $25,000 spent at U.S. supermarkets per calendar year (then 1X points).

Those rates of return make the Amex Gold Card a significant upgrade over any card that only earns 1% to 2% on those purchases. Plus, Amex Membership Rewards points are extremely valuable when redeemed for travel, as you can transfer them to a long list of airline and hotel loyalty programs.

At CNBC Select, our mission is to provide our readers with high-quality service journalism and comprehensive consumer advice so they can make informed financial decisions. Every credit card story is based on rigorous reporting by our team of expert writers and editors. While CNBC Select earns a commission from affiliate partners on many offers and links, we create all our content without input from our commercial team or any outside third parties, and we pride ourselves on our journalistic standards and ethics.

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For rates and fees of the American Express^® Gold Card, click here.  

*For Capital One products listed on this page, some of the above benefits are provided by Visa® or Mastercard® and may vary by product. See the respective Guide to Benefits for details, as terms and exclusions apply.