Debts Reducing... What to do with cleared overdraft and credit cards?

Percy1983

I am at a point now where my debt clearing is going really well.

As it is me and my Fiancee have combined all debts and are just paying everything in order of highest APRs.

Now as it is we now have 3 empty credit cards and an empty overdraft.

Firstly how does an overdraft look as far as credit scoring goes, My first instinct is just to get rid of it, but could it be helping as far as credit utilisation scores go?

A similar question with the credit cards, they have the worse APR's so have been cleared and we are now going to see if we can get the APR's down or get some balance tranfer deals, but if they don't budge would it be better to leave them open or cancel them or the same reasons above?

The cards are Virgin, Mint and Halifax if anybody has any advice on getting them to actually do what I want.

Lemon_Tree

what i did was reduce my overdraft down to a token amount just in case the bank mess up a transfer or something (which they have done a fair bit recently)
as to credit cards, as i cleared them i cancelled them, they show as having available credit if you leave them open which could hinder your chances if you need to apply for any for 0% purposes.
Hope this helps

Numpty_Monkey

I agree with LT about the the OD
The credit cards it could be worth a call to them to see if they will do low % balance transfer
If they don't then close them or use one to start building your credit score back up
pay for the monthly shop on it but have a DD setup to pay balance in full every month(no intrest charged)

Percy1983

I don't think I need to rebuild my score, I have never missed any payments etc, I just don't want to harm it buy not cancelling (or cancelling) cards.

I am interested in how it would look on my credit file.

Right now I am about £6.5k away from my total available credit, which looks quite good. But if I just cancel the cards etc I will then be about £100 from my available credit but of course have less available credit. Which looks better?

I will add I may try applying for other CC's for offers too.

BecBlueC4

Hiya

Which credit cards are they?? I find I get new offers from some...Halifax has just offered me 4.95 LOB and MBNA always send 0% deals.

I cleared my overdraft off but still have it at £900 as I'm worried something will happen.

Bec