How Do people get so many credit cards?

themaccas

I'm not so anti-credit cards as I was 6 months ago because I can see that used correctly (as in using it for our purpose) it can be a cheap way to borrow. We have all our debt on cc's apart from my car loan (£1500ish) all with LoB interest deals at 4.9%. We have got 9 credit cards between us, we cancelled 6 last year and will cancel another 5 when we are debtfree. 2 of the other cc's give us 10% of servicing and parts for our car, 1 of the other gives us free purchases abroad and the other is always offering really good LoB/interest free periods and would consider using it if we wanted to make a big purchase like another car in the future.

I am not tempted to splurge on them anymore though.

Gemmzie

It's pretty crazy how much the different companies will offer you.

But like themaccas has said, they do have their uses and their pro's if you are careful with them

chevalier

thanks for all of the replies. What surprises me is that quite often you see that someone has 3 cards, that are all ultimately run by the same company but branded to other companies. This would seem to me to be a doubtful business practice, in terms of risk.

I like the idea of the mortgage thing. That is really canny thinking. Well done on that one
chev

livinginhope

Evening chevalier,we had 5 CC with a combined credit limit of £60k,3 of these
cards were with the same company,as were the other 2 with another company,these companies then gave loans on top to total our debt,at the last 'offering' I wasn't working and DH was only earning 25k,totally ridiculous!
they offered us this because they,as we,thought the insurance payout would cover it :mad:
LIH

sophiesmum_2

My dad has had a barclaycard for over 30 years and has always paid it off in full each month. We were having a conversation about cc's at xmas when he showed me his statement - he has a credit limit on the one card of over £80,000:eek: :eek: :eek:
The frightening thing is that he is retired :eek: Good thing he is sensible with money.

sophiesmum

chevalier

flipping heck sophiesmum, that is ginormous (sp). You would have thought that there would be a computer code or something, that said don't automatically increase a persons limit past 50K or something.

All I can say is WOW

Cozy9k

sorry a little off topic i only have one which i am about to get balance transferred to the 0% hsbc one then cancel the first one

i also have a cahoot flexible loan for approx £6200 and wanted to use the egg money and m&s card trick to get this debt on the m&s card at 3.9% for the lob but i have only just sent off the paperwork for the hsbc one

now all this talk of getting a few cards and lots of credit can i apply for the egg money card and the m&s card now or should i wait for a bit and apply for them at different times

its just the cahoot loan needs sorting out now as they upped the interest to 14.9%

any advise appreciated

Cheers

Cozy

kazl_2

Most of our debt is on credit cards. They are still offering us increased credit limits :rolleyes: Barclaycard have just put my limit up from £4900 to £6500 without me asking for it. I was wondering whether or not I should phone and ask them to leave it as it was?
There must be some sort of checking going on though because I applied for the HSBC 0% card and it was declined before I even got to entering any details of loans, credit cards etc We have never defaulted or paid late so not sure why it was declined (apart from the level of debt but I hadnt got that far!) I was hoping to transfer some to 0% card but never mind. Sorry for rambling

madduck

The bit about having several cards with ultimately the same lender is an interesting point. In my dark credit ridden days I had several cards (all with scary limits) which ultimately linked into RBS. In addition I had a loan (with was linked to RBS) and a car loan (company linked to RBS also).

I know that I'm responsible for my debt (I'm not trying to claim otherwise) but for RBS don't you think that lending me such a large amount of money (about the level of my annual salary) over a 2/3 year period was a bit risky?

I wouldn't be too happy if I was an RBS shareholder!

SunderlandBlackCat

Cozy9k wrote:

now all this talk of getting a few cards and lots of credit can i apply for the egg money card and the m&s card now or should i wait for a bit and apply for them at different times

I applied for & got the egg money card in December & applied for & have been accepted for the m&s card this month. Just received & returned the credit agreement today so still don't know what the credit limit is.