Is having too much credit holding me back?

indierocker85

Hi

I am looking at reducing my credit cost, and credit card debt as a whole

I keep getting refused for balance transfer credit cards, interest rate decreases, or credit limit increases on my low interest card (wanting to balance transfer to it from high interest cards).

I have an Aqua Classic (39% APR) with a £2400 limit
I have a Barclaycard Platinum Simplicity (7.9% APR) with a £2100 limit
I also have a Capital One card (35% APR) with a £500 limit

Barclays hinted that they can't give me a limit increase, as they look at the amount of credit available, and it's based partially on this. It got me thinking, does the high limit on the high interest card, hold me back from getting limit increases or new credit elsewhere?

If it does, would I be sensible to phone Aqua and say please reduce my limit, and keep doing so until the debt is cleared and just cancel the card, I mean afterall, the percentage is ridiculously high, and I took the card out as an initial credit card to get credit and build a rating up, though it seems to be going against me.

Any help is appreciated

guesswho2000

You don't state what the balances are on these cards? Or your salary/income?

£5,000 isn't a particularly large amount of credit, but if these cards are close to their limits, your debt utilisation percentage, rather than total amount of credit, will likely be having a negative impact.

Similarly, if you have a low income, lenders may not be willing to let you have more than £5k (although you'd be looking at a sub £10k income to make £5k look too much).

pvt

Any prospective lender looking at your CRA info will see you have a sub-prime credit card with debt on it, and you haven't paid it off. So that would indicate you're in some difficulty.

As GuessWho indicates, your indebtedness rather then your available credit is what matters most.

The_Boss

pvt wrote: »

Any prospective lender looking at your CRA info will see you have a sub-prime credit card with debt on it, and you haven't paid it off. So that would indicate you're in some difficulty.

As GuessWho indicates, your indebtedness rather then your available credit is what matters most.

The lender won't know whether it is a mainstream or sub prime card.