A credit card conundrum

savvylondoner

A little puzzle for the experts on here to advise me on! I am paying off CC debt slowly but surely - currently around £16k across 5 cards varying from £600 to £6500, making more than minimum payments on each. My utilisation is 69% - I have access to £24,900 of credit across 8 cards, 3 of these have a balance of zero.
I know things vary from person to person but I have lots of questions and little knowledge...
1. Should I close cards once they're paid off? This would reduce my access to credit, but increase my utilisation %. 
2. How much credit is too much? Is there a certain % of salary that is the ideal amount?
3. With a poor credit rating, how long might it be before I am able to get 0% BT offers? The accounts are all in good standing and have been for 1.5 years.

Thanks in advance for any help!

[Deleted User]

Keep them open. You have very low limits and having those closed will do you no favours.

Try for a BT card. If declined twice, leave it a couple of months before trying again.

Make sure you're paying as much as you can to the highest rate debt.

alfred64

Unlikely to get new cards with such a high utilisation. Keep all cards but reduce debt as much as possible. 8 cards will not prevent you from obtaining more but high utilisation will.

savvylondoner

Thanks for the responses so far. I actually took out two new cards (they're high APR but don't intend to use them) to decrease my utlilsation %. Hoping that was a good thing to do. Now am focused on paying down. First milestone is 50%!