Shuffling/ Reducing amount of Cards

meredith132

Is there any benefit to reducing amount of CC by moving balances to others if credit still available then closing the empty cards down?

National_Debtline

Hi meredith

It depends on what you want to achieve - is this about improving your prospects of getting something like a mortgage, or simply about minimising the amount of interest you pay on your balances each month?

When a potential lender assesses you, they look at not just the outstanding amounts you owe but the amount of credit you have access to - the higher this figure, the greater the risk in their eyes. So you should certainly close down any unused card accounts.

Regards

Dennis
@natdebtline

FireWyrm

When you approach creditors, they look at how much credit is available to you and if this is more than 50% of your net salary, they tend to have a coughing fit. If you want to take advantage of better options in terms of longer balance transfer periods and cheaper consolidated credit, then it is best to have access to as little free and unused credit as possible before hand. There is a danger that the creditor may downgrade your credit worthiness simply because it would be possible to get yourself into a lot of trouble if they added their credit to the pool too and you suddenly went nuts and used it all.

meredith132

Hi thanks, yes just going through all my options because I realised I had 8K credit available on cards:eek: