Multiple cards....do I keep?

J_Devon

Good morning all,

I'm hoping for a bit of advice please. I currently have 4 credit cards as listed below with their outstanding balance / credit limit:

:eek: Egg Card - £1500 / £6350 (currently on 0% BT)
Barclaycard - £0 / £5650
Virgin - £0 / £5100
Natwest - £0 / £800

I'm going to be clearing the Egg card within the next 2-3 months so will then have 4 cards with no outstanding balances. My question is firstly, would you suggest I keep all 4? If not, which one/s would you suggest I cancelled?

Secondly, I wondered if buying a few items each month (of no more than say £40) on one of the cards, and then paying off the balance in full each month is worth doing?) I was thinking in terms of credit rating (or any other reason?). I did read Martin's article where he says that this will not be good towards applying for another CC as they'll make no money from you. I was thinking more from the point of view of just keeping one active as I think 4 is more than enough.

Any advice/thoughts much appreciated

Thanks,
J

DemiDee

I was in the same situation until last week. Had Barclaycard (formerly Goldfish, formerly Morgan Stanley!), AMEX, HSBC and A&L. I gave up AMEX (can't use it in half the places I try to) and A&L (regretting that now, since I had over 10K credit limit!). I tend to use Barclaycard for everything, but it only has a £1000 limit.

Whatever you do, just ensure that you are using a card that suits your needs. There's nothing worse than cutting up the wrong one!

Dee

pogofish

Thankfully I never took out a great slew of cards but when it did come time to rationalise, I kept one Mastercard and one Visa & that was it. Obviously it was the ones with the lowest rate/annual fee.

At the peak of my card debt, I did seriously consider the 0% for £100 a month spending deal that one of them offered but decided just to bite the bullet & keep paying/maintaining/consolidating because it was simply too much of a financial knife-edge to rely-on long term. Similarly another bank offered a new card recently with a more attractive rate/extras but the cost of that turned out to be a tenfold increase in the annual fee.

About all I use them for now is online stuff or in absolute extremis. You still occasionally come across places that only accept one or the other.

Otherwise, they play no part in my day to day financial life.

dhassen

Well I wouldn't keep all 4, but what I would probably do is just keep the Egg and the Virgin ones. They both allow SBT (handy) and offer new deals if you've got 0 balance (VIrgin definatley do, I think Egg do). Maybe consider decreasing the limits though, especially if you're planning on applying for any new credit (car loan, re-mortgage).
Spending a little every month and paying off in full is normally considered a good idea too. Just keeps lots of green zeros on your credit file, shows your good for credit.

Well done on getting rid of all that debt (assuming you had balances on all your cards!).

J_Devon

Thank you for the replies.

Yes, I did have balances on all of them, though not near the credit limits shown. I've finally managed to get to point where I'm only £1500 away from being totally debt free.

Okay, I think perhaps an idea is to keep 2/3 of them with the best interest rates and cancel the others.

I don't ever use them at the moment, but I was thinking as the OP mentioned, perhaps spending a small amount on one each month and paying it off would keep the credit file looking good?

dhassen

J_Devon wrote: »

I don't ever use them at the moment, but I was thinking as the OP mentioned, perhaps spending a small amount on one each month and paying it off would keep the credit file looking good?

Good idea yes.

For another slant, seeing as your almost debt free.... why not get a new cashback credit card and start making some money from them - rather than making them money? Maybe keep one card for 'rainy day / roof falls in' and have another, cashback card for all your spending.

That's my plan - one day!

J_Devon

Yes, I like the sound of that. I'll have a look around for the best cash back deal credit cards (unless anyone knows any off the top of their heads). I guess it would make sense to cancel a couple of my existing ones before applying for the cashback one?

dhassen

Yea, close a few of them before applying for anything new. Here's a list of the top cashback cards from the stoozing site: http://www.stoozing.com/cashback.php