How many cards is too many?

chrisw99

A few years back we had a house extension, which went massively over the budget we'd borrowed more for, so ended up using credit cards and 0% transfer offers to effectively get a free loan rather than end up paying ££££s more over the life of a loan.


Worked out well, I know what I'm doing, keep it all on spreadsheets when each deal ends and so on.


So I had 6..
first direct visa
mbna mastercard
Lloyds tsb
Halifax
Nationwide
HSBC


And just this week got a 7th, the Tesco 0% for 34 month one (brilliant deal)


Obviously I'm not advocating getting more cards to borrow more money, just to keep spreading it thinly around to keep it at 0% as much as possible. Some of those above get emptied when transferred, and you then find they want you to put it back so they tempt you with further 0% deals on your older cards. So over the past few years a lot of it has gone round in circles, but apart from the transfer fee it's still a lot cheaper than a loan would have been.


My question.. is there any drawback to getting more and more cards? My credit rating is 991 out of 1000, having all those cards and never having missed a payment helps, so getting more is never a problem.


When a new 0% 3 year deal pops up by someone new (as with Tesco this week), it seems daft not to take advantage but I am getting conscious of the fact I now have 7 cards. (Apart from 2 of them which are my long time normal cards, the other 5 I cut up as soon as they arrived so I would never get tempted to use them, they were purely for transfer dealing)


Should I be closing some of them when they are at £0. Or just leaving them because having a card at £0 balance is harmless.


Would be interested to hear opinions..

Kernow666

i have 1 debit card & 1 credit card ( halifax clarity ) that i only use if i go away on holiday or buy things fro abroad

in my line of work i see people coming in daily with sometimes a dozen cards both credit & debit

unless your getting some benefit out of it then i dont see the point of having multiple cards

chrisw99

Kernow666 wrote: »

unless your getting some benefit out of it then i dont see the point of having multiple cards

Getting massive benefit from them, as I said earlier it was to get effectively a free loan, but as a lot of the deals a few years ago were for 18 months at 0% before interest kicks in, then to keep it at 0% you then need new ones.

Voltaire7

chrisw99 wrote: »

Getting massive benefit from them, as I said earlier it was to get effectively a free loan, but as a lot of the deals a few years ago were for 18 months at 0% before interest kicks in, then to keep it at 0% you then need new ones.

Should maybe work out why you need to keep getting loans.

chrisw99

Voltaire7 wrote: »

Should maybe work out why you need to keep getting loans.

Sorry I thought I'd made that clear in the first paragraph of the first post. I don't "keep getting" loans, I needed a single loan a few years back for a house extension so instead of borrowing £20000 over 7 years which would have cost £25000 in total with the interest I put the £20000 on credit cards and 0% transferred it, so once it's paid off I will have paid nowhere near the £25000 , probably well under £21000 with the nominal transfer fees each time a chunk is moved.


It saves thousands of pounds in the long run .


Although I notice banks are now doing that kind of loan at 3% APR which wasn't available a few years back.. probably because they realised you could get better "loans" using credit card deals.

pinkjets

I don't think there is any harm in it as long as you are not tempted to spend on them and get yourself into a financial repayment situation that you can't sustain.
Just make sure you are continuing to pay off the credit cards (even though they are at 0%) so that the debt is being cleared.

On_my_way

It probably depends on what you want to do in the future. A mortgage adviser would probably suggest that having too many credit cards is not a very good idea.

solentsusie

chrisw99 wrote: »

Sorry I thought I'd made that clear in the first paragraph of the first post. I don't "keep getting" loans, I needed a single loan a few years back for a house extension so instead of borrowing £20000 over 7 years which would have cost £25000 in total with the interest I put the £20000 on credit cards and 0% transferred it, so once it's paid off I will have paid nowhere near the £25000 , probably well under £21000 with the nominal transfer fees each time a chunk is moved.


It saves thousands of pounds in the long run .


Although I notice banks are now doing that kind of loan at 3% APR which wasn't available a few years back.. probably because they realised you could get better "loans" using credit card deals.

I really wouldn't worry about responding to Voltaire7 this person just seems to like making posts that attempt to rile people rather than be helpful or useful in any way. Verging on trolling.

Personally if you no longer have the use for the card I would close it as it could effect you possibly getting further credit in the future. You could look over stretched with too much available credit whether you are using it or not. It could potentially stop you getting another deal.

Good luck.

chattychappy

I have 10, 7 of which I regularly use.

1) Clarity for cash overseas
2) Santander Zero for cash overseas (backup)
3) Nationwide Select for purchases overseas
4) PO Mastercard for purchases overseas (backup)
5) Sainsbury Mastercard - UK purchases (on a long 0% deal)
6) MBNA Mastercard - UK contactless purchases (Sainsbury is not contactless)
7) Barclaycard - has an old BT deal which will expire soon. Also a backup for foreign cash.
8) Natwest Mastercard - currently unused
9) Tesco - currently unused
10) M&S - currently unused.

Having credit available doesn't tempt me to spend. I do keep an eye on dormant accounts in case of fraudulent spend. Only 5) and 7) carry a balance from month to month. These are relatively small.

g6jns_2

Two should be plenty. Three at the absolute outside.

itchyextremist

I think you had a good idea transferring debt around to get as much benefit as you could from the 0% cards.


I don't think there's any harm in having a few cards. If you need to borrow, might as well get the best deal possible, and can't get better than 0%.


I suppose the downside is having a lot of credit available to you, but if you're not tempted to use it then no problem.