Closing credit accounts?

shel0314

Hi all, am new to the forums, joined as I'm hoping to get a mortgage this year & love reading all the advice on offer here.

I have quite a few credit accounts & have recently moved a balance of approx 4700 to a Virgin Money 0% 41 month deal. Is it beneficial for me to close any of my old credit cards/credit accounts or should I leave them open. Below are all the accounts I currently have:

Barclaycard - Balance £0 - Credit limit £4200
Very.co.uk - Balance £0 - Credit limit £1000
Halifax - Balance £0 - Credit limit £1500 (mine and SO current account are with halifax and we're hoping to mortgage with them, so I'm thinking keep this one open)
MBNA - Balance £0 - Credit limit £6600
Virgin Money - Balance 4739.06 - Credit limit £5900

Im thinking i defintely need to close some of these but which would be the best ones to close to not affect my credit score too much??

Thank you in advance!

[Deleted User]

Firstly a credit score means nothing, what they might look for (and who knows?) are cc you are using and paying more than the minimum repayments on each month.

Carl31

i close mine purely to make sure i can get their 0% deal next time i need to switch, sometimes they have a limit on applications in a time period

shel0314

Thanks for your replies!

I'm still not really sure what I should do because I keep reading 2 opposing sides, one is that my 'credit utilisation' score will be low as I have a lot of unused credit. But then I've also read that this is a bad thing as some companies total up all your unused credit in the event that it all gets maxxed out.

I do pay more than the minimum payments I pay a fixed amount each month if that helps?

robber2

'Credit utilisation' is simple maths and real. In your case the figure is 25%

'[Your] Credit score' is a fictious number generated by Credit Reference Agencies to seperate gullible people from their cash.

Best to keep any discussion of the two entirely seperate.

Rob

cooltt

shel0314 wrote: »

Hi all, am new to the forums, joined as I'm hoping to get a mortgage this year & love reading all the advice on offer here.

I have quite a few credit accounts & have recently moved a balance of approx 4700 to a Virgin Money 0% 41 month deal. Is it beneficial for me to close any of my old credit cards/credit accounts or should I leave them open. Below are all the accounts I currently have:

Barclaycard - Balance £0 - Credit limit £4200
Very.co.uk - Balance £0 - Credit limit £1000
Halifax - Balance £0 - Credit limit £1500 (mine and SO current account are with halifax and we're hoping to mortgage with them, so I'm thinking keep this one open)
MBNA - Balance £0 - Credit limit £6600
Virgin Money - Balance 4739.06 - Credit limit £5900

Im thinking i defintely need to close some of these but which would be the best ones to close to not affect my credit score too much??

Thank you in advance!

Hello there
I'll give you my 2 pennies worth, (i have my sources) so you can take it or leave it.

Keep the oldest card that's of most use to you and steadily increase its credit limit. You don't have particularly high limits on any of the cards you've listed, (i'm talking 10K+) so some pruning is in order.

Old well run accounts go in your favour as do accounts with high limits. A combination of the two go very much more in your favour.

p.s. Credit scores are not meaningless (as the clowns on here keeping bleating on about). At worst it is a vague indication of how lenders see your credit management at best it is exactly how lenders see your credit management. Therefore it is not "completely" meaningless. having a rubbish score and still getting credit is the exception NOT the norm.