Too many credit cards?

katie4

i have five credit cards all of which now have a 0 balance however the total limit over all cards is £14k
should i cancel some of them? is there an appropriate amount to have available? thanks

[Deleted User]

It depends.

Your limits are very low, so you're not exactly drowning in credit.
What is your income?
What cards do you have?
How old are each of them?

katie4

Deleted_User wrote: »

It depends.

Your limits are very low, so you're not exactly drowning in credit.
What is your income?
What cards do you have?
How old are each of them?

income £19k
barclays £1200
Tesco £3600
Virgin £2700
American Express £6000


the other card is my husbands with £6k something limit
all new within year (used for 0% bt) except barclays

[Deleted User]

They're all worth keeping, as they're good cards for future offers. Does the Amex give you cash/rewards?

katie4

Deleted_User wrote: »

They're all worth keeping, as they're good cards for future offers. Does the Amex give you cash/rewards?

Tbh i don't use the amex at all, i had it as i was able to access pre sale tickets with it

[Deleted User]

Make sure you use it from time to time so it doesn't go dormant.

It's the only vaguely decent limit you have and shows that at least one lender trusts you.

Ben8282

katie4 wrote: »

income £19k
barclays £1200
Tesco £3600
Virgin £2700
American Express £6000


the other card is my husbands with £6k something limit
all new within year (used for 0% bt) except barclays

All of the cards are new issued within the last year. All were used for 0% balance transfers.
Where did you transfer the balances from and how come they all have a 0 balance?
Your total available credit is not high and the credit limits are not high either.

onlyfoolsandparking

There's no hard and fast rules as to how many cards one should have, the number is all dependant on the person, their lifestyle and most importantly their income.


I have 10 cards with 150K in limits, it suits me as I stooze from time to time and when I want to buy something a bit 'high end' I can do it much cheaper than any bank loan.


I do believe lenders like to see long relationships with borrowers, it probably shows stability and discipline, like me I have access to decent funds but I have never used over 30% of my limit/s and I get good BT offers majority of the year but as I said at the beginning there are no hard and fast rules, everybody's circumstances are unique to themselves and their lenders.

katie4

Ben8282 wrote: »

All of the cards are new issued within the last year. All were used for 0% balance transfers.
Where did you transfer the balances from and how come they all have a 0 balance?
Your total available credit is not high and the credit limits are not high either.

Hi we had a high apr Aqua credit card which was transferred and a capital one card too, we have now obtained a consolidation loan for all of our debt. we have started putting the extra money we would have originally been paying onto these cards into an emergency fund

eskbanker

katie4 wrote: »

Hi we had a high apr Aqua credit card which was transferred and a capital one card too, we have now obtained a consolidation loan for all of our debt. we have started putting the extra money we would have originally been paying onto these cards into an emergency fund

You're surely not saying that you succeeded in transferring interest-incurring debt onto 0% cards and then shifted it off to a loan where it'll start incurring interest again?!

Building up an emergency fund is generally a good idea but less so if you have debt that's attracting interest, unless the interest on the loan is so low that you can earn a better return in savings?

katie4

eskbanker wrote: »

You're surely not saying that you succeeded in transferring interest-incurring debt onto 0% cards and then shifted it off to a loan where it'll start incurring interest again?!

Building up an emergency fund is generally a good idea but less so if you have debt that's attracting interest, unless the interest on the loan is so low that you can earn a better return in savings?

barclays was not 0% apr was 18% loan is 3.99% we're going tp overpay what we were paying onto the cards to the loan now