How many credit cards before effects Credit Rating ?

ahll

Hi All,
I wonder if anyone can clarify this for me...I have heard that if you apply for quite a few Credit Cards in a short time it effects your credit rating in a negative way !

Is this true ?
How many CC can you get without effecting your credit rating ?

I ask because we are trying to sort out our finances and so move money onto 0% CC to reduce the interest being paid but we dont want to adversly effect cretid ratings.

OH applied for Nationwide one to use on Holidays as recommended on here
OH then just about to get Mac millan to transfer Lloyds CC onto for 0%
Applied for an NSPCC card but havent sent the forms back to accept it

Clariman

How long is a piece of string ? It depends on lots of things e.g. your credit card payment history, your income, your total credit available, the amount of credit you are actually using etc etc.

The more cards you have or the more searches you do in a short period of time, then the more likely it is that your credit rating will be lower. Don't forget, though, that you and OH have separate credit histories, so it looks as if he has done 2 applications recently and you have done 1. That should not have a major impact I wouldn't have thought. If I were your OH, I would lay off applying for anymore for a month or two and then, perhaps, try another one. If you have only applied for 1 recently (and you don't already have half a dozen in your name and your credit history is good !), then applying for another should not be a big problem

Clariman

Woby_Tide

every credit card application affects your rating, 1 could tip some peoples rating over the limit, 15 could tip someone elses

Afahmaep

Woby_Tide wrote:

every credit card application affects your rating, 1 could tip some peoples rating over the limit, 15 could tip someone elses

20 in my case. Just been refused a SKY card from Barclays having cancelled a Gold Barclaycard Mastercard 5 months ago.
To all outside viewings I'm into HOCK with UNSECURED debt of over 100k BUT my positive balances are far in excess of this a fact not available to the CRAs