How do I find out how many credit cards I have?

Albannach

I know that sounds like a stupid question, but I'm having real problems trying to get a consolidation loan (£60k salary, £20K loan, repayments at 60% of my current outlay, bankrupt 25 years ago, no credit/repayment problems since) and I'm wondering if I have too much "available credit".

Over the years, I have done the CC shuffle and I'm thinking that some of the accounts I've cleared may still be active (even though I asked for them to be closed), hence the 'How do I find out...' question.

TVMIA

Andy

salau2

Contact a credit reference agency and request a copy of your credit profile. There are usually 1 month free trials such as credit expert by Experian, Equifax and Call Credit (annual credit report dot co dot uk).

agrinnall

If you do the free trial you must remember to cancel it before you start getting charged. Far better is to pay £2 for your statutory credit report, if you look in the sticky at the top of the forum it will tell you how to do it. You need to check both Equifax and Experian as some credit card companies only use one of these. To be absolutely certain check Call Credit as well, although I haven't seen anything to suggest any mainstream credit card is reported only on here.

CLAPTON

if you already have 20k of debts and you are asking for a 20k loan then the potential lender will see your total debt as 40k
even though you know you are consolidating the CCs with the loan they don't know that and anyway you may run the CCs up once again

after getting your credit files maybe consider try for a smaller loan and then pay off the higher apr cards and later try again once the CC show up as clear.

Albannach

After many hours of scouring here, the internet, old card statements and my credit files; I think I know what the problem MAY be.

Several years ago, I had more than £30k on my cards, with an available credit limit of just over £65k on 5 cards (one card had a £20k limit!).

About a year after I stopped using the cards and was only paying off the balances, the card companies started slashing my limits. So, I've gone from £30K being less than 50% of my available credit to £20K being 97% of my available credit.

Could that be the problem?