Is 2x subprime credit cards better than 1 for rebuilding credit file?

Hairymonster

Hi I recently received a capital one credit card for rebuilding my credit file.

Also recently when I logged into my Current account provider Barclays; the asked me to fill out an online form to "see" if I could be pre-approved for their own credit card. after filling the form it said that I they can offer me a Barclaycard initial credit card if I wish.

I have been sent a reminder for this today as I was thinking one is enough but if I did get 2 cards and say used one for buying diesel and the other shopping and always paid balance in full is this a lot better way of rebuilding credit file than doing what I was going to do and use just the capital one card for both diesel and shopping?

erimus1

Hairymonster wrote: »

Hi I recently received a capital one credit card for rebuilding my credit file.

Also recently when I logged into my Current account provider Barclays; the asked me to fill out an online form to "see" if I could be pre-approved for their own credit card. after filling the form it said that I they can offer me a Barclaycard initial credit card if I wish.

I have been sent a reminder for this today as I was thinking one is enough but if I did get 2 cards and say used one for buying diesel and the other shopping and always paid balance in full is this a lot better way of rebuilding credit file than doing what I was going to do and use just the capital one card for both diesel and shopping?

I would certainly say that more accounts that are kept in good order and are established are better, so the sooner you get it the better. Also remember that a good proportion of your credit score is based on your available credit to debt ratio.

So the more you have as available credit the better, on the proviso that you are not using any more than say 30 or 40% of the available credit. Also bare in mind though that once you get up to a certain amount of available credit, lenders will take into consideration your available amount in correlation to your salary.

e.g. Having two cards with 1k each, and only using say £200 on each would put your ratio at 20%

If your salary s say £20k then that would mean your available credit would be 10% of your salary - also seen as positive. If you use a sliding scale with these two things, you can see how someone who is a good credit risk could become a potentially bad one by having too much credit.