Cancel or Keep?

nickylabron

Hi there,
My wife and I recently remortgaged and borrowed an extra 10 on top to clear our credit cards that were coming to the end of their interest free rates. All three cards have now had their balance cleared, each one around 3k. We plan to just have one joint card now for emergencies.

What's best for our credit rating now please, would it be best to shut all three down immediately then apply for a new card? Or keep them open and apply for the new one? Not sure what's best. Thank you for your help 

Malkytheheed

Definitely get rid of them. Forget about your credit rating/file/history/score. If you 10k of debt that you had to borrow again to service then you shouldn't have credit cards just now. 

sourcrates

Hi,

You have just turned unsecured debt into secured by consolodating the card balances into your mortgage, now you want to take out further credit, may i ask why ? why do you need a new card ?

Emergencies should be funded by a monthly savings contribution from your disposable income, not from a credit card.

Either way, your "credit rating" is a made up number that just reacts to change of any kind, so from that point of view it dosen`t matter what you do.

goldieandblackie

Cancel all three cards if you want or cancel them over say 6 months one at a time.
I always apply for a 0% credit over x number of months and when the zero rate runs out I apply for a different 0% credit card and start again, thus never paying any interest and play the banks at their own game.

phillw

goldieandblackie said:

Cancel all three cards if you want or cancel them over say 6 months one at a time.
I always apply for a 0% credit over x number of months and when the zero rate runs out I apply for a different 0% credit card and start again, thus never paying any interest and play the banks at their own game.

You can do that without closing the cards though, old 0% cards are good for a DD to meet bank account requirements for example & some cards come with rewards that are worth keeping the card for the odd purchase (I have an AA credit card that still pays cashback on AA membership renewal for example).
Compatibility with Google Pay may also be a consideration as that is a lottery these days.
I'd only recommend closing a card if you can't control your spending.
I am not sure how worried the 0% credit card providers are about your unused credit limits, they are trying to trick you into taking out credit that you won't be able to pay off at the end of the promotional period.

Fireflyaway

Personally I'd close them all down so you are not tempted to use them again and so you have less 'available credit' which could reduce how much mortgage you get. Save up an emergency fund instead. If you really want to have a credit card, keep one of your existing ones and close the other two. You don't want credit searches to be done soon before applying for  mortgage for example.